Estimation of angle-dependent mode coupling and attenuation in step-index plastic optical fibers from impulse responses

• Published in: Optics express Vol. 21; no. 14; pp. 17077 - 17088
• Main Authors: Mundus, M, Hohl-Ebinger, J, Warta, W
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 15-07-2013
• Subjects: Algorithms; Computer Simulation; Equipment Design; Equipment Failure Analysis; Light; Models, Theoretical; Optical Fibers; Refractometry - instrumentation; Scattering, Radiation
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OE.21.017077

We report on a method for estimation of angle-dependent mode coupling and attenuation in step-index plastic optical fibers (SI-POFs) from the shapes of impulse responses at two different fiber lengths. While alternating the fiber lengths, deviations between simulated and reference impulse responses are minimized by optimizing both mode coupling and attenuation parameters using pattern-search routines. Applying a matrix-based finite-difference approach to Gloge's time-dependent power flow equation fast computation of simulated impulse responses is enabled. We demonstrate that mode-dependent coupling and attenuation parameters converge to values that reconstruct fiber characteristics reported by other authors. We show that our results can be used for prediction of impulse responses, yielding determination of frequency responses, fiber bandwidths and coupling lengths. We conclude that our method enables characterization of SI-POFs from fiber impulse response measurements.