The simple and cost-effective method for the voltage controlled variable optical attenuator using the piezoelectric ceramic tube with the electrodes on the surface (Invited Paper)

Abstract

In this letter, we proposed a simple and cost-effective variable optical attenuator (VOA) through controlling a mechanical misalignment between 2 single mode fibers. A piezoelectric ceramic tube having 4 electrodes on the surface is the key component in our proposed structure. We can change the deflection of the tube by controlling the applied voltage on the electrodes of the tube, which causes the optical loss to be dependent on the applied voltage. The fact that the piezoelectric ceramic tube can be easily fabricated by using the electro-phoretic deposition processing makes our structure more attractive for mass production. The tube-fabrication processing is out of the range in this paper. So, the detail technical approach of the tube fabrication is excluded intentionally. The numerical analysis about the optical loss related to the various mechanical offsets is also investigated. From our experimental results, the dynamic range of the proposed structure is about from 0 to 25 dB when the applied voltage range is from 0 to 600 V DC. Our proposed structure can be a good candidate for a simple and cost-effective variable optical attenuator in optical communication system field.