OFC/NFOEC is presented by:

ComSoc

Non-financial Technical
Co-sponsor:

Short Courses

SC101 Hands-on Workshop on Fiber Optic Measurements and Component Testing

SC101A, Monday, February 25
8:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

SC101B, Monday, February 25
1:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Lorenz Cartellieri1, Peter Schweiger2, John Kim1; Karl Merkel3, Michael Kelly4, Caroline Connolly5, Richard Buerli5; 1Experior Photonics Inc., USA, 2Agilent Technologies, Canada, 3Agilent Technologies, USA, 4Agilent Technologies GmbH, Germany, 5OptoTest, USA

Level: Beginner (No background or minimal training is necessary to understand course material)

Course Description
This Short Course focuses on the practical aspects of working with fiber optic components and instrumentation used to make optical performance characterization measurements. Four fully equipped stations are available for hands-on participation. After a 45- minute orientation, the class splits into four groups.

Rotation 1) Basic Component Testing—test and measurement techniques and latent issues involving singlemode and multimode fiber, cable and connectors (including launch condition effects, bend loss sensitivity, insertion loss and return loss, and visual fault location).

Rotation 2) Passive Component and Optical Amplifier Testing--demonstration of transmission and characterization of optical amplifiers and passive components (such as isolators, filters and multiplexors). The hands-on experiments will demonstrate measurement methods incorporating optical spectrum analyzer (OSA), broadband source and tunable lasers.

Rotation 3) Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR) and Fiber Link Characterization—understanding the measurements involved in characterizing a fiber link for high speed communications—and demonstration of an OTDR for testing and troubleshooting of networks. By analyzing the backscatter, links length, attenuation and reflections can be analyzed. Anomalies such as connectors, splices and breaks can be evaluated. As speeds increase, measurements such as Chromatic and Polarization-Mode Dispersion become necessary. These letter measurements will be reviewed and demonstrated.

Rotation 4) Polarization Dependence of Fiber Optic Components—demonstration of polarization dependence of fiber optic components and how to measure and evaluate this parameter. Test instruments like polarization controllers, tunable lasers and optical power meters are used to measure PDL using the All-States-Method and the Mueller-Stokes-Method. Experiments will help participants visualize polarization dependent behaviors of fiber-optic components.

Benefits and Learning Objectives
This course should enable you to:

Intended Audience
This course is valuable to engineers and managers interested in measurements and characterization of fiber optic components. Class size is limited to 16. Some familiarity with fiber optic test equipment is assumed.

Instructor Biographies
Lorenz Cartellieri is the president of Experior Photonics Inc. He has more than 10 years of experience in the fiber optic industry and test applications. Working for Airbus in Germany he completed a study on OTDR use in aircraft. He worked as a senior design engineer at Rifocs Corp. designing fiber optic instruments and as a product manager for physical layer test systems. There he also taught educational courses on fiber optics. Lorenz Cartellieri is Chairman of the TIA subcommittee for Fiber Optic Metrology FO-4.5. He holds a B.S.E.E. from the University of Hanover in Germany and master's degree from the University of Phoenix.

Peter Schweiger has worked in the test and measurement world for more than 16 years. He joined Hewlett-Packard/Agilent in 1987 as a staff engineer in Toronto, Canada, where he lives again today. In 1994, he moved to Agilent’s Optical Division in Boeblingen, Germany. Since 1999 he is the business development engineer and technical trainer for Agilent Optical Network Test Products in the Americas.

John Kim has more than 10 years of experience in fiber optic tests and various measurement applications. Before co-founding Experior Photonics in 2003, he worked for Rifocs Corp., where he was a senior design engineer and was principally responsible for developing automated systems and software for specific fiber optic applications, including environmental temperature cycling, ribbon fiber and flex-circuit verification, wavelength and polarization measurements, and DWDM component qualification. He received a B.S.E.E. from Stanford University and an M.S.E.E. from Purdue University.

Karl Merkel has worked in test and measurement for more than 20 years. In 1984 he joined Hewlett-Packard/Agilent as a staff engineer in Palo Alto, California. In 1987 he moved to Colorado Springs, where he continues to work as an application engineer for Agilent’s photonic measurement division. He has worked with a wide range of Agilent’s optical test products in research and development, manufacturing and installation/maintenance applications.

Michael Kelly specializes in applications support of optical measurements for Agilent Technologies’ photonics measurement division in Boeblingen, Germany. He is also active in standardization groups for fiber-optic measurement methods. He earned a bachelor of science degree at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire and a doctorate at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1987, both in physics. He has long research experience with spectroscopy and optical measurements.

Richard Buerli is the President of OptoTest Corp. and has been involved in fiber optics test and measurement since 1984. His background encompasses the communications and telecommunications industries, including LAN instruments, fiber optics, fiber optics components and fiber optics test equipment. Before becoming the president of OptoTest, he served as vice president of new product development for Tempo Research, a test equipment supplier for some of the most respected companies in the datacom, telecom and fiber optics market, where he assumed responsibility for RIFOCS engineering and product development and led an engineering team of 25 engineers and support staff on multiple projects. Buerli was previously with Photodyne/ 3M Photodyne as a senior product engineer for fiber optics products, specializing in optical time domain reflectometers (OTDRs). He holds a master's degree in computer sciences from the Institute for Technology (ETHZ), Zurich, Switzerland, a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, HTL Winterthur, Switzerland, and a certification in management from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is a member of IEEE, SPIE and TIA, and published articles in various trade magazines.

Caroline Connolly is sales director at OptoTest Corp. and has been involved with fiber optic test and measurements technologies and cable assemblies for more than 12 years. Her experience covers all areas of physical layer optical testing ranging from laboratory to field applications. Before joining OptoTest, Caroline worked for many years for the successful test equipment manufacturer Rifocs Corp. in various key sales positions. Caroline holds a bachelor's degree in business management from the University of Phoenix and an associate's degree from Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.