Polarization-based Optical Fiber Sensing: A State of the Art Review

The widespread use of optical fibers and the need for commercial optical coherent transceivers to extract the light's state of polarization (SOP) for data demodulation has sparked interest in polarization-based optical fiber sensing, which would allow to have a sensing system that relies entirely on already-installed optical telecommunication infrastructure, at a very low cost compared to distributed acoustic sensing systems. This paper provides a state-of-the-art review of the most recent developments in polarization-based sensing, including results from our research.