Customer-Made 3◊3 Polymer Optical Fiber Splitter Based on Green Technology using Fusion Technique

Problem statement: Polymer Optical Fiber (POF) has many advantages making it the choice of today's communication, especially in auto motive industry. This communication requires low cost ways for much information to be sent simultane ously. Because of this, using Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) concept, a low cost and green 3 ×3 POF splitter is fabricated. It is fabricated using cheap and easy-to-find tools such as metal tu be and candle. Approach: The fabrication is being done by taking three strands of POF and heating the middle parts so that it will melted and fused together until it elongated and shrink to a diamete r of 1 mm. Successfully fabricated POF splitter are characterized by measuring the output losses, befor e and after the POF's end is being smoothed and polished using two sand study of different degree o f coarseness. This is to observe the effect of polishing on optical signal losses. POF splitter's losses are also measured on different temperature t o observe the effect of temperature on the splitter's performance. Results: Based on the result, it is obvious that cleanliness and a flat POF's end surfa ce influenced the losses with a reduction between 0.3- 5.0 dB. Temperature, even though subtle, does also affect the signal losses with increased losses averaging around 0.3 dB. Overall, the losses in the fabricated POF splitter are still high, but show promising improvement with amelioration of fusion technique and the use of tools with higher quality. Conclusion: This low cost fabrication technique is believed to commercially produce cheap POF splitter, but with more in-depth research on the fu sion technique, source of losses and ways to minimize the losses and improve output optic signal s.