High reliability optical splitters composed of silica-based planar lightwave circuits

Abstract

The environmental and mechanical reliability of a planar lightwave circuit (PLC)-type optical splitter modules is investigated with reference to the Bellcore requirements. The module is composed of Y-branching silica-based waveguides on Si connected to optical fiber with UV-curable adhesives and is packaged in a metal case which is filled with humidity-resistant resin. High optical performance such as low loss, low reflection, and thermal stability are obtained through the use of this fiber connection technique. Ten reliability tests including long-term environmental and mechanical tests were carried out for more than ten PLC splitter modules. Under one of the most severe sets of conditions (75OC and 90% RH), all the 19 samples we tested were stable for more than 5000 hours. Other tests confirmed that the PLC splitters offer long-term stability and that their optical characteristics have sufficient mechanical strength. These results indicate that the PLC splitters can be used for practical applications.

Photonic Crystal Fiber Based 1 ×NIntensity and Wavelength Splitters/Couplers

“…These devices are generally composed of optical fibers that are put in touch by fusion (Ozeki & Kawasaki, 1976), etching (Sheem & Giallorenzi, 1979), or mechanical polishing (Tsujimoto et al, 1978) methods. Optical splitting/coupling can also be performed by means of planar circuits (Hibino et al, 1995), some of which are based on diffraction principles (Smit, 1996) or, more recently, long period fiber gratings (Liu et al, 2007). However, those devices are generally cumbersome and fragile in comparison to what could be obtained using another optical support: a photonic crystal fiber (PCF).…”

Universal optical line terminal encoding and decoding architecture in two-code keying for noncoherent spectral amplitude coding optical code division multiple access systems

“…This replaceable word is the insertion loss of E and insertion loss of F. The insertion loss of the optical splitter (and optical combiner) is 11 dB according to the Ref. 17. Therefore, the insertion loss is 11 dB for the optical splitter (and optical combiner).…”

Fabrication of pure silica films for planar optical waveguides using colloidal suspensions

“…The silica waveguides have the advantage that they can be fabricated to mode-match optical fiber, thereby minimizing optical coupling loss and facilitating easy fiber-attach. Such waveguides can be made efficiently and reliably by extending the VLSI platform that was originally developed for microelectronics [2]. 0022 There are a number of deposition techniques that can be advantageously used for fabrication of planar waveguides: flame hydrolysis deposition (FHD) [3], low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) [4], sputtering [5], oxidation of porous silicon [6] and sol-gel coating [7][8][9].…”