An Optical Fiber Comprehensive Analysis System

for Spectral-Attenuation and Geometry Parameters

Measurement
Di Yang1, Dingke Li1, Jinjin Tao1, Yong Fang1, Xin Mao1, Weijun Tong1
1
State Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber and Cable Manufacture Technology,
Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable Joint Stock Limited Commpany

Abstract—We propose a rapidly automated comprehensive

optical fiber analysis system for spectral-attenuation and A. Structure of Comprehensive Analysis System
geometry parameters measurement on G652, G655, G657, The structure of comprehensive analysis system is exhibited
GI50, GI62.5 fibers. Currently, an accuracy within 1% for in Fig. 1. Firstly, keep beam switch rising up. The well-cleaved
spectral-attenuation measurement has achieved and the output fiber is mounted on a three–dimensional (3D) electric
repetition of geometry parameters testing is less than 0.1um. controlled stage, then fine moving the position of fiber through
Total testing process (do not include the time required to stepping motor control system, to make the picture of fiber end
pretreatment and position the fiber) only costs less than 20 centered and clear in CCD. Secondly, place the other end of
seconds, to the best of our knowledge, this is the fastest long fiber on stage 1, a 850nm light emitting diode (LED) is
integrated fiber measurement system. used to enhance luminance of fiber core. At this time, computer
Keywords—fiber attenuation; fiber geometry; integrated system captures the image in CCD, analysis parameters on fiber
geometry. After that, the beam switch falls down, keep the
I. INTRODUCTION output fiber unmoved. Shift the other end of long fiber to stage
2, to inject the light from halogen lamp into input fiber. Keep
Spectral-attenuation is one of the key parameters for single- this state, test the output spectrum intensity,
mode and multimode fiber since it is closely related to the recorded as . Afterwards, maintain fiber on stage 2
transmission efficiency in optical network. Although absorption stationary, cut of 2 meters long short fiber and put the cleaved
by silica molecules in the UV and IR wavelength regions and fiber on stage 3. Next, the beam switch ascents again, focus the
Rayleigh scattering still constitute fundamental limits to the short fiber and then falls again to measure the input spectrum
loss of silica-based optical fiber, the loss of optical fiber has intensity .
been decreased significantly by reducing the OH– impurity in
the material and eliminating defects in the structure in the last
few decades. The optical fiber attenuation spectrum is still one
of essential parameters needs to be detected for fiber
manufacturer.
Meanwhile, fiber geometry parameter (including cladding
and core diameter, non-circularity, and core-cladding
concentricity) can also influence the fiber transmission
efficiency, mechanical properties and the splicing loss, that is
another essential data needs to be supervised for the fiber
manufacturer.
In this paper, a comprehensive optical fiber analysis system
for spectral-attenuation and geometry parameters measurement
is designed on single-mode and multimode fibers. The
integrated system has achieved accuracy within 1% for
spectral-attenuation measurement, while the repetition precision
is less than 0.1um for geometry test. It costs only less than 20
seconds for entire process.
II. STRUCTURE OF INTEGRATED SYSTEM
Fig. 1. The structure of comprehensive analysis system
As mentioned above, since spectral-attenuation and geometry
are two key parameters needs to detect for fiber manufacturer. B. Spectral-Attenuation Measurement
We research a comprehensive integrated measurement system, Through comparing the spectral transmission of a piece of
which can save human cost in fiber testing process. long fiber to that of a short reference fiber measured under the
same condition, spectral-attenuation can be calculated as the
following relation:
 (1)

where is spectral-attenuation with the unit of dB/km;

is the output spectrum intensity for long fiber, while
is corresponding input spectrum intensity for short fiber; L is
the total length of long fiber. The key point of this technology is
to strict limit the injection condition of measured fiber,
preventing high order modes with greater loss to influence the
precision of results.
C. Geometry Parameters Measurement
The fiber end is imaged onto a silicon charge-coupled
device (CCD) camera which is connected to a video digitizer. Fig. 2 The interface of comprehensive analysis system
Image analysis is done on a digitized single frame of the
TABLE I. GEOMETYR MEASUREMENT REPETITION ACCURACY
camera output that is acquired and stored by the digitizer
hardware. Fiber Type G652 GI50 GI62.5
For the geometry parameters measurement, the gray-scale
analysis is designed to obtain the boundary between core and Measurement Core
cladding. Repetition
Accuracy Cladding
An ellipse can be fit to the edge table using least-squares
techniques. The data is given as (Xi, Yi), and the modeled
ellipse's center as (X0,Y0), with polar angle , and major and
minor axial radii A and B, respectively, the calculation of the
best fit ellipse finds the minimum error using the following
formula:
(2)
The measured result of diameter can be obtained from the
geometric mean of the major and minor axial radii:
(3)
Non-circularity (NC) is calculated by:
(4)

III. RESULTS
The surface of comprehensive analysis system is presented in
Fig. 2. The frame on the left is the image of fiber end which
used for geometry analysis, while the right box displays result
of fiber attenuation value with different wavelength. Results
exhibited in Fig. 2 are from a piece of ordinary 25km long
G652 fiber.
Table I is the repetition accuracy of fiber geometry
measurement. For single mode fiber (such as G652, G655,
G657), the comprehensive analysis system shows better
performance on core test precision than that of multimode fiber.
The reason is that multimode fiber possesses much larger
diameter than single mode fiber. For one system, absolute
deviation is a constant. In this way, larger core diameter has
greater relative error.
Fig. 3 is the comparison of spectral-attenuation results
between a commercial fiber attenuation test device and our
comprehensive analysis system. The dark blue points are results
from a commercial fiber attenuation test device, while the light
blue line is the result from comprehensive analysis system.
Deviation between the former and the latter is less than 1%.
Fig. 3 The comparison of attenuation results between a commercial fiber
attenuation test device and our comprehensive analysis system.
IV. CONCLUSION
We design a multifunctional optical fiber analysis system
for spectral-attenuation and geometry parameters measurement
on G652, G655, G657, GI50, GI62.5 fibers. Currently,
deviation within 1% for spectral-attenuation measurement has
achieved. While the repetition of geometry parameters testing is
less than 0.1um. Total testing process only costs less than 20
seconds, to the best of our knowledge, this is the fastest
integrated fiber measurement system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported by the special technical innovation of
Hubei province (item number: 2016AAA014) in China.
REFERENCES
[1] Photon Kinetics, Inc., “Fiber testing devices, systems and
methods,” Chinese patent: 105938042A, 2016