Testing of highly doped and photonic crystal optical fibers

Abstract

The paper presents optical measurements – spectral loss, OTDR and PMD, temperature cycling and mechanical tests – bending, twist and crush, performed on Yb-doped single mode fibers and small-core photonic crystal fibers (PCF). Several issues related specifically to characterization of such specialty fibers, like measurement errors and artifacts as well as coupling of test instruments to samples are presented. Of particular importance is reliable and low-loss fusion splicing of specialty fibers to standard single mode fibers (SMF), as most commercially available fiber test instruments are fitted with SMF interfaces only.