Problem statement: Polymer Optical Fiber (POF) has many advantages making it the choice of today's communication, especially in automotive industry. This communication requires low cost ways for much information to be sent simultaneously. Because of this, using Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) concept, a low cost and green 3×3 POF splitter is fabricated. It is fabricated using cheap and easy-to-find tools such as metal tube and candle. Approach: The fabrication is being done by taking three strands of POF and heating the middle parts so that it will melted and fused together until it elongated and shrink to a diameter of 1 mm. Successfully fabricated POF splitter are characterized by measuring the output losses, before and after the POF's end is being smoothed and polished using two sand study of different degree of coarseness. This is to observe the effect of polishing on optical signal losses. POF splitter's losses are also measured on different temperature to observe the effect of temperature on the splitter's performance. Results: Based on the result, it is obvious that cleanliness and a flat POF's end surface influenced the losses with a reduction between 0.3-5.0 dB. Temperature, even though subtle, does also affect the signal losses with increased losses averaging around 0.3 dB. Overall, the losses in the fabricated POF splitter are still high, but show promising improvement with amelioration of fusion technique and the use of tools with higher quality. Conclusion: This low cost fabrication technique is believed to commercially produce cheap POF splitter, but with more in-depth research on the fusion technique, source of losses and ways to minimize the losses and improve output optic signals.

Problem statement: Huge capacity for data transmission and bandwidth are becoming a need nowadays. High cost of implementation using optical fibers prevents utilization of the technology as wide as possible. Approach: Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) was a technique that offers the solution for providing better bandwidth. WDM technique allows several signals that have different wavelengths to be transmitted in a single optical fiber to the receiver without any external interference or internal interruption between the signals transmitted simultaneously. WDM technique requires splitting of signals at reaching the receivers and one of the solutions presented in this study will provide a method using inexpensive filtering device that functions efficiently as a demultiplexer that can be develop without any complication. There were a lot of systems that provided demultiplexing techniques in the industry; all the systems are expensive to be implemented. Here the study provides an effective and easy to construct demultiplexer by using colored thin films. The WDM-POF system studies the performances of thin-films to be used as demultiplexer and red thinfilms will be focused. Results: In theory, the thin-films will filter out any undesired signals that pass through the fiber and the desired signal will be carried to the end-receiver. The effectiveness of each red thin-films were characterized by analyzing the insertion losses (dBm) and power output (µW). Characterization analysis in this study includes the characterization test of using the same sources towards different types of red thin-films to obtain the best film that could filter out any undesired wavelength and let only the desired wavelength to be transmitted at high percentage. An initial stage of selecting different colored films by analyzing the energy spectrum distribution curves for the potential red thin-films will then be characterized where red, blue and green LED sources were injected through the films. Small insertion loss of the signal transmitted for the same wavelength of the source and high power output will be preferred. High insertion loss and small power output are preferred for filtering out the undesired wavelengths. Comparison and characterization analysis through the samples and graph simulations provides the efficiency of the thin films that were used in the optical WDM-POF short-haul communication system. Conclusion: Optimum performance can be observed through the end-receivers that have been connected to the device developed such as the Ethernet connectivity and the result of video image received the signals as desired.

Development of a polymer optical coupler using lapping technique integrated with contact mechanics and couple mode theory is proven where the initial procedure of fabrication is explained. Procedure of the fabrication includes etching process where a harmless chemical solvent, acetone, is used in order to remove the cladding layers gradually in accordance to the etching rate. The exposed region of the core is then aligned with another similar strand of fiber. The bending radii or bending angle is determined using particular size of circular blocks. Several experiments using different etched rate fibers attached to circular blocks having the same radii is demonstrated to investigate the output power and insertion losses of the developed coupler. Although in this initial study, the measurement parameters values shows unattractive results, however, the fabrication of couplers using this lapping technique is proven.

No abstract

No abstract