A system and method that effectively measures the polarization dependent gain
of
an optical amplifier without significantly introducing error into that measurement
is provided. A saturating optical signal source generates an optical signal capable
of saturating the optical amplifier. A slow polarization scrambler then randomly
polarizes the optical signal to yield a polarized optical signal, which is used
as an input signal of the optical amplifier. The output signal of the optical amplifier
is then transferred to a fast polarization scrambler, resulting in a PDG measurement
signal, which is then presented to an optical signal analyzer that measures the
intensity level of each channel of the PDG measurement signal. Alternately, a wavelength
division multiplexing (WDM) polarization mixer is employed to mix the polarization
states of WDM channels of the polarized optical signal from the slow polarization
scrambler with respect to each other, yielding the input signal for the optical
amplifier under test.
