Research of parameters of fusion splices of telecommunication multimode optical fibers and silica microstructured fiber lightguides with hexagonal configuration

This work presents the results of experimental approbation of the ability to fuse telecommunication graded index multimode optical fibers of ISO/IEC Category OM2+/OM3 and silica microstructured optical fibers by using a commercially available field fusion splicer kit Fujikura-36S (Fujikura Ltd., Japan). We tested silica microstructured optical fiber with a hexagonal configuration that provides quasi-singlemode operation over an extended spectral band up to short wavelengths (λ = 800–1700 nm) in comparison with conventional singlemode optical fiber of ratified ITU-T Recommendations. The potential possibilities were explored for reducing of attenuation by selection and combination of fusion program parameters (arc current and arc time) to find a compromise between quality fusion splicing without any defects and minimization of insertion loss. About 1.5 m long short segment of researched microstructured optical fiber was spliced between two spools with multimode fibers, while each one of them was also spliced with two pigtailed spools with singlemode optical fibers. Fiber length of each spool was at the least 1 km long in order to provide insertion loss measurements by using optical time domain reflectometer EXFO AXS-110 (EXFO, Canad a). Based on a series of experiment, we have identified an optimal combination of arc current (STD-30 a.u.) and arc time (1100 ms) which provides desired compromise between reducing the fusion program parameters to prevent the MOF air hole collapsing under the quality splice without defects, and decreased insertion loss. As a result, the total insertion loss has been reduced to 0.8–1.0 dB and more in comparison with the reference value. For instance, mentioned above program settings gave the loss 5.721 dB under the reference value 6.722 dB. Therefore, the experimental results confirm ability of fusion splicing microstructured and multimode optical fibers with an acceptable insertion loss by using commercially available field fusion splicer kits. This provides to utilize proposed microstructured optical fibers with extended singlemode operation wavelength range in various applications of laser technology, optical devices and short-range high bit rate optical networks.