Fiber-Optic Communication and Torsion Sensing via a BB84-Inspired Polarization Scheme
Polarization-encoded optical-fiber links provide a useful platform for investigating the coexistence of communication and sensing functions in a shared optical channel. In this work, a classical analog of the BB84 polarization-encoding scheme was implemented over a bend-insensitive fiber link to evaluate how temperature, axial strain, and torsion affect the transmitted state of polarization and the recovery of a binary key. Temperature variations from 24 °C to 35 °C and axial strain up to 2 mε produced only minor polarization-state variations and did not affect key recovery. In contrast, fiber torsion induced a pronounced retarder-like evolution of the state of polarization, reducing the detector-intensity contrast used for bit discrimination and degrading key recovery. For intermediate torsion angles, the erasure rate reached 50%. The polarization state tended to recover for rotations close to Δθ = 180°, consistent with the oscillatory response observed on the Poincaré sphere. These results identify torsion as the dominant impairment in the tested polarization-encoded fiber link and demonstrate its potential use as a sensing mechanism in integrated communication-and-sensing architectures.