Fused Biconical Taper Optical Splitter

A 1:8 Planar Lightwave Circuit (PLC) splitter is diagrammed in the figure below. A PLC splitter is made with techniques much like those to manufacture semiconductors, and these optical splitters are very compact, efficient, and reliable. A single 1:32 PLC splitter may be no larger than 1cm x 2 cm.

Planar Lightwave Circuit (PLC) Optical Splitter
The loss to be expected from a 1:8 splitter like the one diagrammed above is less than one dB greater than what would be expected from a perfect splitter, which has exactly 9 dB of loss (3dB for each 1:2 split). A good 1:32 PLC splitter has an attenuation in both directions of less than 17 dB or even 16 dB (a perfect 1:32 splitter would introduce 15 dB of loss).

June 10, 2011

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