Fitel USA Corporation

Furukawa Electric North America, Inc.

Ronald Lamar Adams

Harry Douglas Garner, Jr

Siu-Ping Hong

Haiying Huang

James A Hudson

Robert Thornton

A monitoring system for detection of defects in an optical fiber coating during production of the fiber has first and second beam generating means which produce planar coherent beams which cross each other at the fiber passing through the system creating one or more diffraction patterns. A first plurality of photodetectors are mounted in a mount, the front face of which is impinged by the planar diffraction pattern, and a second plurality of photodetectors is similarly mounted in position below the impinging pattern. A defect in the fiber coating, regardless of shape or orientation, will cause the pattern or patterns to be tilted or shifted upward, downward, or planarly tilted to impinge one or more of the photodiodes which, as a result, generates a signal which is applied to a comparator and control circuit.

Optical fiber coating defect detector

Defects in optical fibers are detected during manufacturing by using three bandpass filters to separate signals from a scattered light signal produced by a light source in a fiber measurement system. The separated signals include a clad diameter signal, a regular airline signal and a core airline signal. The regular airline signal is compared with the clad diameter signal to produce a normalized regular airline signal, and the core airline signal is compared with the clad diameter signal to produce a normalized core airline signal. The normalized regular airline signal and normalized core airline signal are monitored to determine if they increase, which indicates the presence of a defect in the optical fiber.

Method and apparatus for detecting airlines in optical fibers

Growing community of inventors

Buford, GA, United States of America

Ronald Lamar Adams