High Quality Fibre Optical Switches

28 Jul 2020

LASER COMPONENTS is a leading manufacturer and supplier of products in the photonics industry. One of our key qualities is providing a robust supply of innovative components.

We have recently been seeing a growing demand for our fibre optical switches.  They are used in a range of applications:

• distributed fibre sensing: where an optical switch is directly connected to an interrogator and switches between signals going back and forth through a few sensing fibres;

• optical metrology: where a switch is used to couple light to and from several points on the measured surface;

• spectroscopy – one central spectrometer system and multiple channels used with low insertion loss.

Our fibre optical switches can be manufactured with nearly any type of fibre (fibre diameter 2.3µm – 800µm), both single- and multi-mode (PM or non-PM) in the wavelength range of 200nm – 2400nm.

Standard switches can be produced with number of channels, i.e. 1 x N, M x (1 x N), where M, N: 1 … >100.

The switching technology is one of the most robust available and based on micro mechanical/micro optical concept.  This allows for switching speeds as fast as < 5ms, maximum long-term stability and switching cycles in region of >10⁸.

Some of the main benefits of this technology are that the switch itself adds minimal insertion loss (typical IL < 0.7dB), works well with high power laser systems and keeps the cross talk between channels to minimum throughout the device lifetime (< -60dB).

Housing options can be customised, and the standard range is typically made in a compact tabletop housing, 19’’ rack or a small footprint housing for OEMs applications.  Each switch can consist of either pigtail or adapter design and the control interface can be chosen from: RS232, USB, I2C, TTL, Ethernet and manual.

Further information https://www.lasercomponents.com/uk/fiber-optics/active-passive-components/optical-switches/