Development of Automatic Assembly and Evaluation Systems for the Optical Add/Drop Module

Abstract

In this paper, we present a system and program of automatic assembly and measurement for the optical add/drop module of optical fiber and filter. The system consists of upper optical collimator stage, lower optical collimator stage, and optical filter stage. The characteristics of add/drop module with optical fibers and filter is measured in the optimum conditions. In the packaging process of fibers and filter on the optical bench, automatic alignment and measurement systems maintain minimized optical losses conditions until completion of packaging process. In experimental study, the measured Transmission Insertion Loss (TIL) of add/drop module (optical fiber and 1510nm-CWDM filter) based on automatic and manual operations shows the average value of 0.142dB±0.002dB and 0.166dB±0.03dB, respectively. We have confirmed that the standard deviation of TIL of automatic operation is 15 times lower than that of manual operation. Also, the present automatic assembly and evaluation system requires less than 1 minute for add/drop module, while conventional method requires more than 3 minute. Moreover, we have compared the specification of optical filters including 1510nm-CWDM filter and 1536.61nm-DWDM filter with the measured characteristics of them using automatic operation. The measured characteristics of CWDM and DWDM filter are well agreement with the specification of them within standard loss of 0.3dB.