Desarrollo de un sistema semiautomatizado para la fabricación de redes de período largo en fibras ópticas mediante la técnica de inducción por arco eléctrico

Abstract

A long-period grating in an optical fiber is a device that can be used both in the field of communications and in the sensing of a wide variety of physical and chemical magnitudes. In the last mentioned application field, it has characteristics that position it conveniently compared to sensors based on non-optical operating principles (electrical or electrochemical, for example). At the Centro de Investigaciones Ópticas, manufacturing tests of this type of device have been successfully carried out using the technique called "electric arc induction." For this purpose, an experimental arrangement with fundamentally manual characteristics was implemented, the results of which were duly published. This article describes the architecture of a new experimental setup implemented for the fabrication of long-period gratings that emerged as a natural evolution of the manual setup previously tested. The new system employs automation concepts in the most sensitive phase of the grating generation process. Preliminary results obtained after its implementation in the laboratory are reported, discussing its operational and performance differences compared to the manual experimental setup from which it originates.