Distributed characterization of bending effects on the birefringence of single-mode optical fibers.

The effects of bending on randomly birefringent, single-mode optical fibers have been analyzed by means of polarization-sensitive optical frequency domain reflectometry. This distributed, pointwise characterization has been performed on ad hoc drawn spun fibers and on a ribbon cable. Experimental results are in agreement with the theoretical predictions and confirm the effectiveness of reflectometry as a means to characterize polarization properties of optical fibers.