Optical reflectometry based on correlation detection and its application to the in-service monitoring of WDM passive...

We propose and demonstrate a novel technique for measuring the distribution of the reflectivity along an optical fiber transmission line. Unlike the conventional optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR), the proposed technique utilizes the data-modulated transmitter itself instead of the optical short-pulse source, and monitors the distribution of the back-reflected light by calculating the cross-correlation of the transmitted and back-reflected signals. In this paper, we describe the operating principle of the proposed technique and discuss its potential limitation on the dynamic range. We also show that this limitation can be mitigated by using the discrete-component elimination algorithm. In addition, we experimentally demonstrate that the proposed technique can be used for the in-service monitoring of the transmission fibers in a wavelength-division multiplexed passive optical network (WDM PON).