Fiber optic attenuator
A fiber optic attenuator is a passive optical component for reducing optical power propagating in a fiber, and may perform fixed or variable attenuation, which allows high power transmission signals to be processed directly into signal application apparatus. Optical fiber transmission systems often require that the light or signal carried through the system be reduced or attenuated before it can be used. In many optical communication systems, as well as in testing environments, the need arises to be able to adjust the power level of an optical signal. Attenuation is desirable if the optical signal has a power level that exceeds the operating range of the equipment to which the signal is being transferred. Excessive signal power can cause saturation at the receiver and induce system errors and failures. Attenuation is typically achieved by passing the signal through an absorption filter or an air gap. One function of attenuators is to reduce the intensity of optical signals entering a photosensitive device to preclude device damage and/or overloading. Optical attenuators may also serve as noise discriminators by reducing the intensity of spurious signals received by an optical device to a level below the device response threshold. Fiber optic variable attenuators are fiber optic attenuators in which the amount of this reduction may be adjusted. Variable optical attenuators (VOAs) play an important role in the implementation of modern information networks having optical interconnects. VOAs are used for gain control of optical amplifiers in wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) networks, for dynamic channel power regulation and equalization in cross-connected nodes, channel blanking for network monitoring, and signal attenuation to prevent detector saturation. Controllably attenuating a light beam can be achieved by various methods, such as by passing the beam through a variable-attenuation filter, radially bending a fiber loop to vary the optical loss within the loop, thermally changing the refractive index of cladding material, and partially blocking the beam by inserting a beam block into the light beam path. Variable optical attenuators can be generally classified into two types, namely, mechanical and non-mechanical types.
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