The Influences of Connectors and Adaptors to Fiber-To-The-Home Network Performance

Problem statement: The reliability of the entire communications network was dependent on the reliability of each single element. Connector was important devices that can affect the performance of the fiber communication. There were a large number of issues that affect the performance of fiber optic connectors in today’s networks. These factors were increasingly as data rates, the number of wavelengths and transmission distances continue to escalate. Approach: Therefore this study was carried out to test on the influence of connectors and adapters to the performance of the optical network. Initially the actual attenuation of connector and adaptor were tested by using multifunction loss tester. The first two 1 m corning optical fibers with a connector at each end are measured. Then, both the 1 m corning optical fibers were joined together by an adaptor and connected to the Multifunction loss tester. Three types of wavelength are used as the source to test the attenuation of the fiber which is 1310, 1490-1550 nm. In order to measure the Bit Error Rate (BER) and the power loss in optical fiber communication, a simple simulation was carried out by using software opti sys. Results: The attenuation on the connector was caused mainly by existence of impurities in the connector, less perfect connection, scattering of beam and others. These causes the parameter such as power received, Q-factor, minimum BER and also the eye-height to change. Changes in these parameters also affect the performance at the user end. It was very critical that causes of attenuation to be eliminated. Conclusion/Recommendations: From the result it can be concluded that, the greater the attenuation, the greater the decrease in power received. It also affects the Q-factor of the system where as the attenuation increase, the maximum Q-factor decreases. As for the minimum BER, minimum BER changes as the attenuation increase initially, after a maximum value it decreases as the attenuation increases.