PLC Fiber Splitter: Lighting Up the Gigabit Era of Optical Communication

Optical fiber splitters (also called beam splitters) are optical fiber junction devices that achieve coupling, branching, and distribution of optical signals in an optical network system. They are one of the most important passive devices in optical fiber links, having multiple input and output ends. A splitter is denoted as M*N, where M represents the number of input ends and N the number of output ends. Combining multiple optical signals into one is called a combiner. Based on the production process, there are PLC fiber splitters and fused biconical taper fiber splitters.

Types of Optical Fiber Splitters

Non-fused Optical Fiber Splitters

This type of splitter uses a physical method to tightly fuse two or more optical fiber cores together and then gradually taper them to form a long, thin structure called a "taper". When light enters this "taper" structure from the core of one fiber, it begins to propagate between the cores of multiple fibers through total internal reflection due to the reduced core diameter. At the end of the "taper", the light is distributed into each fiber in predetermined proportions, completing the splitting process.

PLC Fiber Splitters

PLC fiber splitters use micro-optical processing technology to create complex optical waveguide structures on a quartz substrate. Through precise design and manufacturing, multiple input and output optical waveguides can be perfectly aligned. When light enters from the input end, the PLC fiber splitter guides the light along the designed waveguide path, splitting it into multiple beams at branching points according to a set ratio, and then emits it from the output end.

Advantages of PLC Fiber Splitters

• The loss of PLC fiber splitters is insensitive to optical wavelength, meeting the transmission needs of different wavelengths.

  
  

• PLC fiber splitters distribute the light evenly, allowing signals to be uniformly allocated to users.

  
  

• PLC fiber splitters have a compact structure and small size, enabling direct installation in existing distribution boxes without requiring much installation space.

  
  

• PLC fiber splitters can support many splitting channels per device, reaching more than 32 channels.

  
  

• PLC fiber splitters have a low cost for multiple channels, with cost advantages becoming more evident as the number of splits increases.