Measurement of attenuation changes of PON elements with temperature

Nowadays, it is obvious that the access networks will be build up from optical networks. With that are linked also optical components. These components are mostly passive connectors and splitters. In terms of the attenuation budget of the entire network, especially the splitters are very important elements in planning of the networks. The change in attenuation of these elements can lead to failure of the entire network. This article is focused to the issue of measurement of attenuation changes of the fiber optic splitters caused by the temperature with different dividing ratios and number of branches. The article describes the attenuation changes with temperature for commercially available single-mode fiber optical splitters and its capabilities for internal use. Effects of temperature were simulated in specialized chamber, which can reach the temperatures of value about 300 °C. Each fiber splitter was measured from all directions and several times in order to construct the statistical evaluation of the measured and calculated data. The measurement content also included determination of attenuation, crosstalk between the branches, insertion loss and total loss.