Design of experiment optimization of erbium-doped fiber to single mode fiber splices

Abstract

Optimizing splicing of Erbium Doped Fiber (EDF) to Single Mode Fiber (SMF) is a critical requirement to maximize the efficiency of Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers (EDFAs). This paper describes the key parameters which affect the splice loss of EDF-SMF splices as well as the optimization process used to achieve 50% splice loss improvement. Before performing the optimization process, the measurement system was validated with an evaluation including: laser stability, detector linearity and Gage R&R (Repeatability & Reproducibility). The optimization of EDF and SMF splicing was performed using a design of experiment with 2^k factorial design and using MiniTab software for data analysis. A commercially available fusion splicer was used. There were 53 parameters available for setting, They were selected and divided into two groups. The first group included the parameters which might affect the splice loss and the second group included the parameters which might affect the estimated splice loss. The optimization process for the first group of parameters was performed until the target loss was met. The Arc1 Power and Arc1 Time were identified as the most critical parameters for loss. Then the optimization process for the second group of parameters was performed until the slope of the graph of estimated splice loss to actual splice loss was nearly one. This method reduced the average actual splice loss from factory setting of EDF-SMF splicing (0.18 dB) to 0.10 dB and SMF-EDF splicing to 0.09dB. The difference between estimated loss and actual loss was less than 0.05dB for either direction (measurements in the EDFSMF and SMF-EDF direction). The proposed design of experiment can be used as a reference process to perform the optimization of EDF to SMF splicing when Erbium Doped Fiber is changed to the other fiber types.