Scientists develop method for monitoring of telecoms

A team from the university’s physical and theoretical chemistry research group has developed a simple way to direct light in and out of the side of fibre-optic cables that doesn’t require relatively expensive splitting or coupling devices.

Originally developed to improve a spectrographic method of analysing liquids, the technique could be useful to the telecoms industry as a way of taking a small amount of light out of a cable to check the signal.

‘This just provides a fairly simple means of doing that,’ lead researcher Dr Claire Vallance told The Engineer. ‘The nice thing about it is it will work for any wavelength of light.

‘Most existing fibre beam splitters or couplers… are optimised for a particular wavelength of light. Whereas our one, because it’s based on a kind of micro-mirror, will work at any wavelength.’

The method involves cutting an optical cable in half and cutting a 45° notch in the corner of one of the exposed ends. Using a straightforward chemical process, the scientists were able to deposit aluminium on this corner to create a mirror.