Qualification of a robust fiber termination

The authors report the qualification results of a single-mode fiber termination for an undersea long-haul laser package. Short-term tests such as temperature cycling, thermal shock, and vibration were used to over-stress the subassembly to determine its robustness against environmental/mechanical forces. Destructive sectioning techniques were used to determine the fiber stress distribution to predict its reliability against static fatigue. The results of long-term qualification aging programs of packaged lasers incorporating this termination design were used to establish a failure estimate of 6 FITs (no activation energy taken into account)