Construction of fiber fuse measurement system for developing ultimate capacity optical fibers

Optical fiber communication systems which enable today's global high-speed Internet are, in fact approaching their capacity limit due to that of transmission optical fibers. Among the various limiting factors, fiber fuse, a horrifying heat destruction phenomenon which destroys optical fiber cores and optical components as it propagates unimpeded towards the laser source, limits the total transmittable optical powers, thus ultimate transmission capacity of the fibers. The project is aiming at developing novel optical fibers which are resistant to fiber fuse and have >1,000 times more data capacity than the present fibers by constructing a fiber fuse measurement system to evaluate fiber fuse characteristics of novel optical fibers and to identify the optimum fiber structures and parameters.