Transverse Strain Measurements Using the Birefringence Effect in Fiber Bragg Gratings

Abstract

Birefringence in fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) leads to polarization-dependent properties such as polarization-dependent loss (PDL). Although this property is not desired for telecommunications applications, we demonstrate that the PDL generated by uniform FBGs written into standard single-mode fiber can be advantageously used for transverse strain measurements, which is not directly possible through amplitude spectral measurements.