Distributed measurements of fiber birefringence and diametric load using optical low-coherence reflectometry and fiber gratings.

Polarization sensitive optical low-coherence reflectometry (OLCR) is used for measuring the complex fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) reflection coefficient. We determine the beat length directly from oscillations in the OLCR amplitude with a resolution of 10(-6) and a spatial resolution only limited by the minimum beat length or the coherence length of the light source. Using the OLCR amplitude and phase in combination with an inverse scattering algorithm the birefringence is retrieved with a resolution of 2x10(-5) while the spatial resolution is 25 mum. The two developed techniques are applied for measuring position, magnitude and footprint of induced birefringence of an FBG under uniform and non-uniform diametric loading.