Manufacturing of azimuthally symmetric long-period fibre gratings using a CO2 laser

M.Ing.The development of fibre optic technology as we know it today, has taken a giant leap forward since the introduction of Internet technology and other telecommunication devices. More recently, the need exists to retrieve and send huge amounts of data fast and efficiently by using fibre optic cable in computer networks, without the need of expensive equipment. Due to the large amounts of data (like video and audio) that has to be sent and received across a computer network at large distances, this dissertation is primarily concerned with the design and manufacturing of low-loss uniform long period fibre gratings for the realization of future optical add/drop multiplexers. An azimuthally symmetric manufacturing method is implemented using several optical components and devices. Several electronic devices are connected to a Mannesmann Rexroth ECODRIVE03 drive controller unit, and a computer control program was written in VISUAL BASIC 6.0 to control these devices during the manufacturing of these unique LPGs. A number of theories and numerical methods such as the coupled-mode theory and the transfer matrix method are applied in the analysis, modelling, and simulation of short/long-period fibre gratings. Simulation results were obtained in MATLAB 6.5 and the code was written in such a way that the end user could simulate any short/long-period grating and obtain the necessary results such as the transmission spectra, time delay and dispersion for uniform fibre gratings. These simulations obtained were a good indication on how the experimental results should look after manufacturing the unique symmetric LPGs