Sensitive and Accurate Dispersion Map Extraction of HNLFs by Frequency Tuning of a Degenerate FWM

A sensitive and accurate method for dispersion map extraction along an arbitrarily profiled highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) is proposed. High sensitivity is achieved by positioning the wavelength of a signal at the band edge of the modulation instability (MI) spectrum generated by an intense degenerate four wave mixing (FWM) pump. In doing so, the to-be-extracted dispersion fluctuations leave a more drastic effect on the FWM-generated power since they either inflate or deflate theMI spectrum. The accuracy of the method is increased by monitoring the distribution of power along the fiber. Once the power distribution is measured along the fiber, dispersion map of the HNLF is extracted using an appropriate inverse algorithm, which reconstructs the dispersion with a highlevel ofaccuracy. I