Measurement of differential mode delay using reference-free low-coherence digital holography

In the mode division multiplexing (MDM) system, differential mode delay (DMD) restricts the quality of transmission. Thus, it is necessary to precisely measure DMD for compensation and system design. The DMD measurement method using low-coherence digital holography (LCDH) has been proposed. This method can obtain not only accurate DMD but also spatial mode fields. However, in this method, an SMF as the reference arm is needed and its length should be particularly adjusted to a fiber under test (FUT) for low-coherence interferometric measurement. We propose a DMD measurement method by reference-free low-coherence digital holography (RF-LCDH). In the proposed method, we generate a new optical path from the light emitted from the FUT, which is regard as internal-reference light. The proposed method enables us to obtain DMD and spatial mode fields without the SMF as the reference arm by using internal-reference light. In the experiment, we measured DMD of a 10-mode fiber to confirm the basic operation of the proposed method. As the result, without using additional SMFs for reference arm, the proposed method achieved the measurement accuracy which was in good agreement with that of the conventional method.