Analysis and simulation of a method of measuring distributed birefringence in a polarization-maintained fiber

Based on a modified polarization-optical time-domain reflectometer technique, a tunable laser is applied to modulate reflection light intensity in a frequency domain, and the accurate distributed birefringence can be determined through the correlation analysis and the least square analysis of the reflected light intensity obtained by optical time-domain reflectometer. The simulation results indicate that the error of measurement is about one order less than the true value without consideration of polarization crossover, and two orders less than the true value with polarization crossover being considered.