Influence of termination on connector loss for plastic optical fibres

Author

Losada, M.A. ; Dominguez-Chapman, F.A. ; Mateo, Javier ; Lopez, A. ; Zubia, Joseba

Author_Institution

Photonics Technol. Group (GTF), Univ. de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

fYear

2014

fDate

6-10 July 2014

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

We assess the influence of fibre end termination on connector loss for single-core and multi-core plastic optical fibres (POF) using different finishing procedures. Insertion loss for standard ST connectors was measured for fibres from different manufacturers but all with poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA) cores, high numerical apertures (NAs) and claddings of 1 mm diameter. We tested single-core fibres with step-index (SI) profiles and a multi-core fibre with 19 cores. We found that the most suitable tool is different depending on the fibre characteristics and that connector insertion loss can be as low as 0.5 dB confirming the high impact of the finishing procedure.

Keywords

finishing; optical fibre cladding; optical fibre couplers; optical fibre fabrication; optical fibre losses; optical fibre testing; optical polymers; PMMA; POF; connector loss; fibre end termination; finishing; insertion loss; multicore plastic optical fibres; numerical apertures; poly-methyl-methacrylate; single-core plastic optical fibres; size 1 mm; step-index profiles; Connectors; Histograms; Insertion loss; Loss measurement; Optical fiber losses; Standards; connectors; optical networks; optical power loss; plastic optical fibres;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON), 2014 16th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Graz

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICTON.2014.6876306

Filename

6876306