Day: April 15, 2022

What is a Fiber Collimator? Why is it needed?

Tell us the name of one common thing that you can find in various high-power components such as high-power optical isolators, fiber circulators, fiber optic attenuators, and CWDM/DWDM modules. All these components have one thing in common and that is called a high-power fiber collimator. In this blog, we will discuss high-power collimators in brief. So, if you want to know what these are and why they are needed, keep reading till the end.

What is a fiber collimator?

The meaning of the term “collimate” means to make light rays accurately parallel. Hence, a fiber collimator is a fiber optic component that is used to help change the diverging light from a point source into a parallel beam.

In other words, a fiber collimator is a simple module that consists of fiber and a lens and its basic function is to produce parallel beams.  

Fiber collimators are used to collimate the light at the fiber end and can also be used to couple light beams between two fibers. During the designing process of fiber collimators, utmost attention is given to the accurate adjustment of the fiber and lens so that parallel beams can be obtained.

Another thing you need to know is that the stronger the signal strength the higher the efficiency of the fiber collimator. And the fiber collimators that can handle a huge amount of power are categorized as high-power components.

An efficiently designed high-power collimator is characterized by low insertion loss, high-power handling capability, excellent temperature stability, and small beam convergence. Hence, it is considered an ultra-reliable device.

What is the need for fiber collimators?

In fiber optics applications, it is often necessary to transform the light output from an optical fiber into a collimated beam. For that, a simple collimation lens is considered sufficient. But the end of the fiber must be firmly fixed at a distance from the lens that is usually equal to the focal length. Thus, to make this more convenient in practice, a fiber collimator is used in fiber optics applications that require a collimated beam.

Fiber collimators can also be used for launching light from a collimated beam into a fiber or for fiber-to-fiber coupling where light from the first fiber is collimated and then focused into the second fiber by another collimator.

Another application of fiber collimators is the combination with a back-reflecting mirror and an additional element to achieve desired effects. For instance, you can insert a Faraday rotator to obtain a Fiberized Faraday mirror.

Other major applications of high-power fiber collimators are fiber lasers, fiber amplifiers, instrumentation, and test and measurement.

The Difference Between Active and Passive Optical Networks

In the optical network transmission process, we usually see the conversion of the electrical and optical signal at the input and output ports using a wide range of active and passive components. The light source is the foundation of optical fiber networks, and all the network transmission is always done in the form of light signals at input and output ports. It is why optical network engineers require active and passive components to design optical networks for accurate and efficient signal transmission and communication.

An optical network can either be an active optical network or a passive optical network, depending on the type and performance of the source signal. The active optical access network primarily employs Active Ethernet technology for point-to-point direct and single fiber bi-directional access, which improves bandwidth but with increased costs. As a result, passive optical access technology (PON) gradually took over the active optical networks to design cost-effective networks for light signal transmission.

What is Active Optical Network (AON)?

AON (Active Optical Network) refers to a network in which the signal is transmitted using a photoelectric conversion device, active optical components, and fiber optics. Optical lasers, optical amplifiers, optical transceivers, optical receivers, and other optical components are included in optical assemblies. The AON is a type of network that enables point-to-multipoint optical communication for a variety of industrial applications such as optical fiber transmission lines and optical remote terminals.

Features of AON Networks

  • Large transmission capacity
  • Long transmission distance without a repeater 
  • Mature technology 

What is Passive Optical Network (PON)?

Passive Optical Network (PON) refers to an optical distribution network (ODN) that doesn’t use any active devices or components for its operations. It includes optical passive components such as optical couplers, optical connectors, optical attenuators, optical isolators, optical circulators, optical switches, and so on in its building blocks. The Passive Optical Network (PON) is designed as an access network for optical fiber applications because it doesn’t use any active component that requires a power source to function. 

Features of PON Networks

  • Large transmission capacity
  • Long transmission distance
  • Low cost 
  • Excellent performance and scalability
  • High reliability
  • Great transparency of business

PON allows point-to-multipoint access network and fiber transmission at high security and low cost. Fast network construction is another advantage of a passive optical network over an active network. It is the most widely used optical network across industries as it is more convenient to scale and upgrade using optical passive components in comparison to AON technologies.