Major Technical Indicators of Fiber Optic Splitters

There are several important technical indicators for fiber optic splitters.

1. Insertion loss 
The insertion loss means the comparison of optical loss between each optical splitter and the total ones. The formula is Ai=-10lg Pouti/Pin, the Ai means the insertion loss of single output, the Pouti stands the optical power of single output and the Pin represents the optical power value of input.

2. Additional loss
Additional loss represents the comparison between total number of optical power of output and the optical loss of input. For fiber optical couplers, the additional loss is an important indicator for technical quality, it reflects the intrinsic loss during manufacturing, and the lower number the better quality. While the insertion loss only represents the output capacity, the additional loss takes more into consideration, including the intrinsic loss and the influence of splitting ratio. For different fiber couplers, the insertion loss is not enough for reflecting the manufacturing quality.

3. Splitting ratio
Splitting ratio is defined as the ratio of output power of every output ends, which is related to the wavelength of light transmission. For instance, the splitting ration will be 50:50, when the fiber splitter is transmitting a 1.31 micron light, when the light is change to 1.5μm, the ration will be 70: 30. 

4. Isolation
Isolation refers to the isolation ability for the signal from other optical path. The isolation is the most important indicator for fiber splitter compared to the above indicators. In general, the isolation of fiber splitter should more than 40dB, otherwise it will influence the performance of the entire system.  

Further more, stability is another significant indicator for fiber splitter, which means no when the natural temperature and working conditions of other device change, the performance can keep in a stable state. What’s more, uniformity, return loss, directivity, and PDL also play important parts in measuring the performance of fiber optical splitter.