Optical Fiber Fusion Splicing and Its Applications

1. Very compact

2. Lower insertion loss

3. With back reflection (optical return loss ORL)

4. The higher mechanical resistance

5. Permanent

6. It can withstand extreme temperature changes high

7. Prevents dust and other contaminants in the optical path

Different types of splicing

Fusion splicing environment and applications can be divided into three types: 1. Field splice 2. Splicing factory and 3. Laboratory splicing.

An important example of field splicing is the set of submarine fiber cables aboard fiber deployment ships. The example of the splice could be factory set of passive optical fiber devices such as a WDM. A laboratory example of splice is made by fusion splicing developed new fibers researchers to test its compatibility with existing industry standard fibers.

Fiber fusion splicing involves concepts from many topics including the theory of optical waveguide, heat transfer, materials science, mechanical engineering, fluid mechanics, etc..

Introduction to fusion splicing process

The main steps can be summarized as follows.

Fiber 1.Optical peel

The fiber cable jacket is removed and then the polymer coating fiber with stripped optical fiber strippers.

2.Fiber cleavage

The fiber is cleaved with specialized tool called fiber blade. There are two types of fiber blade exist: high precision fiber blade for single mode applications and Cleaver field for multimode applications. A mirror as nearly perfect front surface is accomplished through the split process.

3.Fiber alignment

The fibers are aligned with each other laterally by the stepper motor in a fusion splicer. This may involve rotation of the fibers in the polarization maintaining fiber splices.