STOCKHOLM and HELSINKI -- Ericsson Network Technologies, one of the leading manufacturers of fusion splicers, and Liekki Oy, the leading supplier of highly doped specialty optical fibers, today announce new record low results for splicing losses of highly doped erbium fibers. In a joint effort, splicing losses as low as 0.03dB per splice were achieved for highly doped fibers with erbium peak absorption of up to 40dB/m at 1530nm. This effort shows that highly doped fibers can be spliced as easily and effectively as other specialty fibers, and opens up new performance levels for application designers and application manufacturers.

“This effort demonstrates the versatility of Ericsson’s fusion splicers, and in particular shows the strength of our new FSU 15 fusion splicer platform”, says Lars Englund who heads Ericsson Network Technologies’ fusion splicing business. “We are very pleased with the low splicing losses that this effort demonstrates - this directly helps our customers to get the most out of our highly doped erbium fibers”, adds Dr. Per Stenius, CEO of Liekki Oy.

Highly doped erbium fibers have been thought difficult to splice, and this has deterred some designers and application manufacturers from applying them in products that would benefit from using highly doped fibers. In a joint effort to demonstrate the usability of highly doped fibers with fusion splicers, Ericsson Network Technologies and Liekki made a series of splicing tests: The effort involved Liekki’s LF1200 (for C-band amplifiers) and LF2400 (for L-band amplifiers) fibers, Corning’s PureMode1060, PureMode980 and SMF-28 pigtail fibers and the current range of Ericsson splicers, including the new FSU 15 and the popular FSU 995/975 models. Splicing losses as low as 0.03dB per splice were achieved. The average splicing losses demonstrated were less than 0.1dB/splice with a standard deviation of 0.02 dB. These results show that highly doped erbium fibers can be spliced at very low losses as easily as current low doped erbium fibers using fusion splicers widely used in the industry today.

LM Ericsson

Liekki Oy