Design and implementation of a plastic fiber optical rotary joint using upside down taper lens

A novel single-channel optical rotary joint of plastic optical fiber (PFORJ) has been proposed and implemented by using a pair of upside down taper lenses (UDTL). Structure parameters and factors causing insertion loss are analyzed. Experiments containing the fabrication of the UDTL and the measurement of this PFORJ performance at 650 nm wavelength are carried out. Results show that, compared with the conventional POF connection with flat ends, this PFORJ exhibits excellent tolerances for lateral misalignment, axis separation and angular tilt. Besides, this PFORJ is demonstrated experimentally having an insertion loss of 1.23 dB with a lower rotational variation loss of 0.36 dB. These capabilities cannot only greatly reduce the requirements for precision machining, making it extremely easy, convenient to produce, but also can meet the optical communication demand with a very low cost.