Fiber Optic Splitter Loss

In this tutorial we are going to talk about optical splitter loss testing with optical power meter and light source.

Fiber optic splitter loss.

The cable plant loss budget is a function of the losses of the components in the cable plant fiber connectors and splices plus any passive optical components like splitters in pons. There is something different between testing an optical splitter and a patch cable although both of them use optical power meter and light source to test. The use of optical splitters in pon allows the service provider to conserve fibers in the backbone essentially using one fiber to feed as many as 64 end users. Star couplers with up to 32 ports have been possible using fused tapered fiber 3 db couplers.

A typical split ratio in a pon application is 1 32 meaning one incoming fiber split into 32 outputs. Thus the loss budget of the cable plant is a major factor in the power budget of the fiber optic link and is what one calculates to compare against tested. 1 n fiber optic splitter loss ratio chart are given bellow. Real world fiber optic splitters show uniform performance across the whole spectrum of interest from 1260 to 1600 nm.

In order to conserve the power budget of a pon system the insertion loss from the splitter needs to be minimized. Advantages are the low loss easy coupling with the optical fiber transmission line and no polarization dependent loss. Optical splitter loss ratio 1 n. The optical insertion loss is the loss of an optical signal resulting from the insertion of a component such as connector or splice in an optical fiber system.