Effect of the Surface Roughness on Cross Sectional Properties of 1×3 Polymer Optical Fiber-based Splitter

This research focuses on the fabrication of 1×3 low-cost splitter based on polymer optical fiber (POF) and the characterization of the surface roughness on cross-sectional properties of the device. Due to the unique features and advantages of POF such as flexibility, low-cost material, and easy to install, POF is also resistant to high temperature and immune to electromagnetic noise (EMI). Thus, fabrication method to produce a 1×3 POF splitter using a low-cost fusion technique has been studied. A fabricated prototype will go through a characterization process by observing the performance of POF varied by the surface roughness of the devices. Two main parameters, such as excess loss and power efficiency percentage are obtained to observe the surface roughness on the fabricated device. The experimental results reveal that surface roughness is not giving a significant impact on the efficiency of the device. However, when it linked to a twisting ratio parameter, surface roughness shows predictable curves on the power efficiency of the low-cost POF splitter.