An eight-terminal fiber optics data bus using tee couplers

Abstract

An analysis of the performance of a fiber optics data bus using optical Tee couplers has been carried out. Using a design based on this analysis, an eight-terminal bidirectional system was built and tested. Light-emitting diode optical sources were employed in the transmitters and silicon photodiode detectors in the receivers. The couplers, which employ a glass-mixing block with internal mirrors, have excess losses of from 1.0 to 1.8 dB. Worst-case interterminal loss for the entire bus is 45.2 dB, and the minimum signal-to-noise ratio at a 5 Mb/sec data rate is 12 dB.