A pressure-sensitive fiber optic connector for loss analysis of physical contact

We design and fabricate a physical contact (PC) type pressure-sensitive fiber optic connector (FOC), which can be used to measure the contact force and analyze the contact loss caused by the contact force between two PC type FOCs. A fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is wrote on the fiber tip of the connector. The relationship between the Bragg wavelength of the FBG and the contact force exerted on the connector head is got by experiment with a stress sensitivity of 5.4 pm/N. We use this pressure-sensitive FOC for loss analysis of PC type FOCs. The relationships between contact force and insertion loss (IL) of three PC type FOCs have been got experimentally. Finally, finite element simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the system.