How does fiber optic attenuator work?

As we all know, too little or too little optical power will cause equipment errors. Too much power will saturate the receiving amplifier, while too little power will interfere with the signal and cause noise problems. An optical fiber attenuator is an optical device that can be used to attenuate the input power to avoid distortion of the optical receiver due to excessive power.

The optical fiber attenuator reduces the optical power through the absorption, reflection, diffusion, scattering, deflection, diffraction and dispersion. How to reduce the power light level? The fiber attenuator is set in a working wavelength range that can absorb light energy. Within this range, it will not reflect light and reduce unnecessary echo reflection. In this way, the optical power attenuation effect is achieved. Usually, the optical attenuator is made by air isolation technology, displacement dislocation technology, attenuation fiber technology, absorption glass method, etc.

The normally attenuation range of the optical attenuator is 0~65dB. The attenuation power of the fixed attenuators on the market is between 1 and 30dB. Fixed fiber attenuator is a type of fiber attenuator, which fixes the attenuation power at an attenuation value. It is commonly used in telecommunication networks, fiber optic test equipment, local area networks (LAN) and cable television (CATV) systems.

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There is also a variable optical attenuator. The attenuation level of the variable attenuator can be adjusted, for example, from 0.5 dB to 20 dB, or even 50 dB. Some variable attenuators have very fine resolution, such as 0.1dB or even 0.01dB. Mainly used in: optical distribution frame, optical fiber network system, high-speed optical fiber transmission system, cable television (CATV) system, long-distance trunk line dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) system, optical add/drop multiplexer (OADM).

Among them, the fixed optical attenuator has pigtail type, converter type and so on. It can be made into FC, SC, ST, LC, MU and other interface types, which is convenient to use in daily cabling. Generally, a single optical attenuator has two interfaces, male and female, which can be male-female or female-female. The male connector interface is generally used to plug into the receiver of the device or the adapter on the adapter panel, and the female connector interface is used to connect the fiber jumper. HYC can provide various types of fixed female and male optical fiber attenuators with stable performance and reliable quality, which can meet the requirements of various connector interface types and working wavelength customization of ST, SC, FC, MU, and LC.

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Fiber optic attenuators are widely used in optical passive devices. The performance indicators to measure the optical attenuator mainly include attenuation, insertion loss, and attenuation accuracy, return loss, etc. High-performance optical attenuators have low insertion loss, and return loss is usually above 40dB.

HYC Co., Ltd was founded in 2000, has 20 years experiences in OEM ODM manufacturing of passive optical devices. We focus on providing customers one-stop services of the design, R&D and manufacturing of passive optical communication devices. We have fiber optic connectors, fiber optic jumpers, WDM wavelength division multiplexing, PLC optical splitters, MEMS optical switches and other product lines.

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