Distributed Measurement of Birefringence by P-OTDR Assisted with Piezoelectric Polarization Controller

We propose a new polarization sensitive optical time domain reflectometry （P-OTDR） setup assisted with a piezoelectric polarization controller （PPC）. The input state of polarization can be changed by varying the voltage of PPC without any rotatable instrument, and only one optical receiver is used to detect the backward beam. We measure a single mode fibre and get the distribution of birefringence along the SMF.