Mitigation of Polarization-Induced Fading in Optical Vector Network Analyzer for the Characterization of km-scale Space-Division Multiplexing Fibers

We propose an optimized optical vector network analyzer with automatic polarization control to stabilize the reference arm polarization throughout the sweep range. We demonstrate this technique, successfully removing the polarization-induced fading and measurement distortions in insertion loss by characterizing a 10 km multi-core fiber.