Abstract
We theoretically and experimentally investigated the optical performance
of fiber connections with various air-filled gaps. Such gaps might occur when
a fiber connection realized using physical contact (PC) fails unexpectedly
resulting in imperfect PC. The experimental results suggested that the optical
performance of these fiber connections depends on both wavelength and gap
width. When the air-filled gap between the fiber ends is narrow (of wavelength
order) the insertion loss increases between 0.0 and 0.6 dB. The return loss
varies greatly and the worst value is about 8.7 dB. When the gap is much wider
than the wavelength, the insertion losses are mainly affected by the radiation
loss in the air-filled gap between the fiber ends and the return losses are
close to 14.7 dB, which is the Fresnel reflection value at a fiber end in
air. We also found that in the worst case the insertion and return losses
for fiber connections with imperfect PC can deteriorate respectively to ~18 and 9.4
dB at a wavelength of 1.31 μm and ~17 and 9.9 dB at a wavelength of 1.55 μm. In addition, we studied the characteristics
of multi-connected PC-type connectors with an air-filled gap. We discovered
that the total returned light from multi-connected joints with an air-filled
gap could deteriorate to 5.9 dB at worst for four-connected connectors. These
results support the practical use of PC-type connectors in the construction
and operation of optical network systems.
© 2013 IEEE
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