Influence of termination on connector loss for plastic optical fibres

We assess the influence of fibre end termination on connector loss for single-core and multi-core plastic optical fibres (POF) using different finishing procedures. Insertion loss for standard ST connectors was measured for fibres from different manufacturers but all with poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA) cores, high numerical apertures (NAs) and claddings of 1 mm diameter. We tested single-core fibres with step-index (SI) profiles and a multi-core fibre with 19 cores. We found that the most suitable tool is different depending on the fibre characteristics and that connector insertion loss can be as low as 0.5 dB confirming the high impact of the finishing procedure.