Design and characteristics of large displacement optical fiber switch
Plastic optical fiber (POF) is suitable for indoor local area network (LAN), for example, in-home or office networks, because of its flexibility and its ease of connection due to its relatively large core diameter. A 1 2 optical switch for indoor LAN using POF and a shape memory alloy (SMA) coil...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
IEEE
2005
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://irep.iium.edu.my/33177/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/33177/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/33177/1/Design_and_Characteristics_of_Large_Displacement.pdf |
| Summary: | Plastic optical fiber (POF) is suitable for indoor local
area network (LAN), for example, in-home or office networks, because
of its flexibility and its ease of connection due to its relatively
large core diameter. A 1 2 optical switch for indoor LAN using
POF and a shape memory alloy (SMA) coil actuator with magnetic
latches was successfully fabricated and tested. In this paper, the
design concept and the characteristics of this switch are described.
To achieve switching by the movement of a POF, large displacement
is necessary because the core diameter is large (e.g., 0.486
mm). A SMA coil actuator is used for large displacement and a
magnetic latching system is employed for fixing the position of the
shifted POF. For this design, the insertion loss is 0.40 to 0.50 dB
and crosstalk is more than 50 dB without index-matching oil.
Switching speed is less than 0.5 s at a driving current of 80 mA.
A cycling test was performed 1.4 million times at room temperature.
Another optical fiber switch was fabricated and successfully
actuated using plastic clad fiber (PCF). PCF also has a large core
diameter (e.g., 0.20 mm) and optical switches using PCF will be
useful for short distance networks between buildings. |
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