Atec Agilent-8169A - Manual (Page 2)

Page 2 of 6
Introduction
Developing and manufacturing competitive, high-
value components and systems for today's optical
industries require precise attention to polarization
sensitivity. The Agilent 8169A Polarization
Controller can help by saving time, money and
effort when measuring and working with
polarization sensitive devices.
Polarization sensitive devices include EDFAs,
single-mode fiber, and polarization maintaining
fiber, isolators, switches, lasers, couplers,
modulators, interferometers, retardation plates
and polarizers. Device performance will be
affected by polarization dependent efficiency, loss,
gain and polarization mode dispersion.
These polarization phenomena enhance or
degrade performance depending on the application
area, whether it is communications, sensors,
optical computing or material analysis.
An Important Part of a
Measurement System
A polarization controller is an important building
block of an optical test system because it enables
the creation of all possible states of polarization.
The polarized signal stimulates the test device
while the measurement system receiver monitors
the test device's responses to changing
polarization.
Sometimes polarization must be adjusted without
changing the optical power. At other times,
polarization must be precisely synthesized to one
state of polarization (SOP) and then adjusted to
another SOP according to a predetermined path.
Each of these needs is met separately using the
Agilent 8169A Polarization Controllers (refer to
Table 1 for application details).
Polarization
Controller
Test Device Lightwave
Source
Agilent 8169A Agilent 81634B Agilent 81600B
Optical Receiver
Figure 1: Conceptual block diagram of polarization measurements.