Effects of angular misalignments on fiber-optic alignment automation

Automation of fiber-to-optic alignment is critical to the development of co st effective fiber-optic component manufacturing technologies. Key to the a lignment automation is the angular alignment automation, which is now unava ilable. But angular misalignments are unavoidable in practical fiber-optic aligning process. This work evaluates the effects of pitch, yaw, and roll a ngular misalignments for a butt coupling scheme involving the optical coupl ing between a single-mode fiber and a laser diode. It is demonstrated that the coupling efficiency and misalignment tolerance are more sensitive to ti lt, i.e., pitch and yaw angular misalignments than lateral ones. It is furt her demonstrated that the time for locating the optimal coupling position u sing conventional hillclimbing automation searching algorithm is a strong f unction of angular misalignments. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B. V.