Apparatus and method for measuring polarization-dependent loss using repeated high speed polarization scrambling

Disclosed is an apparatus and method for measuring a changing amount of insertion loss of an optical device depending on a polarization state of an incident light, i.e., a polarization-dependent loss. An incident light that is periodically subject to all polarization states passes through a testing optical device by a polarization scrambler including a piezoelectric element type optical fiber birefringence modulator, and an optical detector measures intensity of the passing light, in which the measured intensity values are averaged for birefringence modulation having a constant period, and then the polarization-dependent loss is computed from a ratio of maximum power to minimum power for the period. Use of the birefringence modulator shortens measuring time, and decreases an affect of external disturbance to the incident light that is incident into the testing optical component or occurrence probability of the external disturbance, so that the polarization-dependent loss can be precisely measured.