Fiber management on a printed circuit board: Ensuring long-term reliability

Fiber optics electro-optic receivers, lasers and transceivers are now being deployed on state-of-the-art jet fighters for different sensor and control applications, creating more intelligent aircrafts. These components offer larger information transmission capacities, deployment flexibility for a low weight and power consumption, as well as being immune to electromagnetic interference and lightning, if they are properly designed [1]. These same fiber optics components are being considered for larger deployment in the avionics field. There is a normal concern from avionics applications engineer to introduce optical fiber components in aircrafts circuitry, especially since these components have to be integrated to electronics printed-circuit boards (PCB). The optical fiber technology is associated to the introduction of some specific manipulation and maintenance processes that require a certain learning curve. This paper will show that once the training process is completed, if the proper fiber management design is implemented, fiber optics electro-optics components can be integrated to aircrafts without affecting the long-term reliability, deployment and maintenance cost of the sensor and control systems.