A miniature 1×2 mechanical optical switch with anti-thermal design

Abstract

This paper studies an innovative miniature 1x2 mechanical optical switch with anti-thermal design. Firstly, a novel switch configuration with the line-to-line and fiber-to-fiber alignments is designed. A fiber stopper pivot design is also proposed to reduce the transverse misalignment of fiber tips due to the positioning errors. Then, an included anti-thermal mechanism is proposed by utilizing materials with different thermal expansion coefficients to compensate the axial misalignment due to ambient temperature changes. Finally, the solid model of the optical switch is generated in AutoCAD, and then imported to ANSYS to analyze different thermal responses. According to the analysis results, the misalignment of the fiber tips is reduced and satisfies the insertion loss requirement of Bellcore specifications. This miniature 1x2 mechanical optical switch has characteristics of small size, low-cost and high reliability.