Fiber Optic Coupler Loss

Advantages are the low loss easy coupling with the optical fiber transmission line and no polarization dependent loss.

Fiber optic coupler loss.

Continued use of standard couplers splitters in a bend insensitive glass environment can nullify the bend loss reduction. Fiber optic couplers can be either active or passive devices. Star couplers with up to 32 ports have been possible using fused tapered fiber 3 db couplers. Guidelines on what loss to expect when testing fiber optic cables to be able to judge whether a fiber optic cable plant is good one does a insertion loss test with a light source and power meter and compares that to an estimate of what is a reasonable loss for that cable plant.

The estimate called a loss budget is calculated using typical component losses for each part of the cable plant. Real world fiber optic splitters show uniform performance across the whole spectrum of interest from 1260 to 1600 nm. For example with a 1 x 2 fiber optic coupler each output is less than one half the power of the input signal over a 3 db loss. 50 50 75 25 90 10 or 99 1.

Because of space requirements couplers may be routed in a way that causes enough bend loss to exceed the maximum loss for the channel. Thorlabs couplers are available from stock in one of four ratios. Coupling loss in fiber optics refers to the power loss that occurs when coupling light from one optical device. All of our fused fiber optic couplers are bidirectional meaning that all ports can be used as an input.

2x2 fused fiber optic couplers can split or mix light between two optical fibers with minimal loss and at a specified coupling ratio.