  Fast and complete characterization of pulsed spontaneous parametric down
conversion (SPDC) sources is important for applications in quantum information
processing and communications. We propose a simple method to perform this task,
which only requires measuring the counts on the two output channels and the
coincidences between them, as well as modeling the filter used to reduce the
source bandwidth. The proposed method is experimentally tested and used for a
complete evaluation of SPDC sources (pair emission probability, total losses,
and fidelity) of different bandwidths. This method can find applications in the
setting up of SPDC sources and in the continuous verification of the quality of
quantum communication links.
