TIA Member Spotlight:

LUNA Technologies

LUNA Technologies, a division of Luna Innovations Incorporated (NASDAQ: LUNA), specializes in advanced solutions for fiber-optic test and measurement. Luna’s award-winning product line includes the Optical Vector Analyzer and the Optical Backscatter Reflectometer: flexible and easy to use tools for loss, dispersion, PMD, polarization, high-resolution OTDR, and distributed temperature and strain analysis for optical fiber components, modules and networks. This new technology provides diagnostic capabilities with complete characterization of optical components and sub-assemblies, resulting in substantial cost and time savings in development and production.

Brian Soller, Vice President
General Manager, Luna Technologies Division
Dr. Soller is responsible for day-to-day business operations, business development, marketing and strategic planning. Brian started his career with Luna Technologies as a member of the advanced product development group where he made major contributions to Luna's test and measurement platforms. Brian has also spent time with Luna in product management, applications engineering and sales force development roles. He has numerous publications in the areas of precision optical metrology, polarization effects in guided waves, scattering and guided wave interactions near surfaces and molecular spectroscopy. Brian received his bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, where he studied as a Goldwater Scholar and his doctorate in Optical Science from the University of Rochester.

Please tell us about Luna's Technologies test and measurement instruments, such as Optical Vector Analyzer and the Optical Backscatter Reflectometer. How have your customers put these products to work in the telecommunications area. Optical Vector Analyzer

Luna Technologies’ Optical Vector Analyzer (OVA) is the fastest, most accurate and economical tool for loss, dispersion and polarization measurements of modern optical networking equipment. The OVA is the ideal tool for single connection, all-parameter characterization of fiber components from couplers to specialty fiber and everything in between (fiber Bragg gratings, arrayed waveguide gratings, free-space filters, tunable devices, amplifiers, etc.). With the OVA, development cost, production cost, and time to market for Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing components can be reduced by up to 60 percent. Luna’s OVA characterizes passive optical components with a single sweep of a tunable laser. Our patented technique allows direct measurement of a passive device’s linear transfer function. Using the linear transfer function the OVA provides instant access to:

• Insertion Loss (IL)
• Polarization Dependent Loss (PDL)
• Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD) and 2nd order PMD
• Chromatic Dispersion (CD)
• Group Delay (GD)
• Optical Time Domain response
• Jones Matrix elements
• Optical Phase Response
• Phase Ripple

The OVA’s future-proof design also allows access to new standards like second order PMD. Luna’s unique time domain windowing feature enables the operator to examine a device’s impulse response, revealing the causes of degraded specifications.

The OVA is used in the telecommunications area for research, development, and manufacturing of passive optical components.

Optical Backscatter Reflectometer
The Luna Technologies’ Optical Backscatter Reflectometer (OBR) is the industry’s most sensitive frequency-domain reflectometer - offering unprecedented diagnostic capabilities to the manufacturers of fiber optic components, assemblies and networks. Using the OBR, which works like a high-resolution OTDR, designers and manufacturers can peer into the heart of optical assemblies to measure minute reflections with 125 dB sensitivity, 60 dB dynamic range and 10 micron spatial resolution with zero dead-zone improving product quality and reducing test time. The OBR can be used to locate and troubleshoot splices, connectors, fiber bends and breaks, fiber segments and components embedded in a fiber assembly. With integrated temperature and strain sensing, the OBR gives you the ultimate in fiber diagnostics.

The OBR also has distributed temperature and strain sensing capabilities (see section 4 for more information).
Please tell us more about what your Fiber optic sensors do and how these products’ measurement capabilities are important to your clients' business.

Luna Technologies’ platform of fiber optic sensing includes two different techniques for distributed sensing: the Distributed Sensing System (DSS), which uses Fiber Bragg Gratings and the OBR, which uses standard telecom grade optical fiber.

Luna Technologies’ Distributed Sensing System™ (DSS) is a fiber optic sensing tool for making distributed measurements of temperature and strain. The DSS uses swept-wavelength interferometry to simultaneously interrogate thousands of sensors integrated in a single fiber. These sensors consist of discrete Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) point sensors which can each reflect the same nominal wavelength. As such, the sensors can be fabricated on the draw tower, eliminating the need for individual grating fabrication. The DSS combined with Luna’s sensing fiber provides a tool for distributed sensing with up to 1 cm spatial resolution along the length of the fiber. The DSS applications include structural monitoring for naval, aerospace and civil structures, temperature profile monitoring in extreme environments, pipeline shift and leak detection, electrical power line sag and temperature monitoring, and more.

The OBR can transform standard telecom-grade fiber into a high spatial-resolution strain and temperature sensor. Because it uses swept wavelength interferometry (SWI) to measure the Rayleigh backscatter as a function of length in optical fiber with high-spatial resolution, an external stimulus (like a strain or temperature change) causes temporal and spectral shifts in the local Rayleigh backscatter pattern in the fiber. The OBR measures these shifts and scales them to give a distributed temperature or strain measurement. The SWI approach enables robust and practical distributed temperature and strain measurements in standard fiber with millimeter-scale spatial resolution over tens to hundreds of meters of fiber with strain and temperature resolution as fine as 1 µstrain and 0.1 °C. The OBR has been used to look at strain in cables as they are installed within a network, heating in fiber due to laser amplification, medical applications, strain in turbine blades, and more.

Please tell us the value you gain from your TIA membership.

TIA membership allows our participation in industry standards meetings, discounts at major shows like NXTComm, and access to other networking opportunities.

OBR 4400
The OBR™ 4400 takes the industry’s first ultra-high resolution optical time domain reflectometer with backscatter-level sensitivity designed for component-level, module-level, and short run network reflectometry to the next level. With a small, easily transportable platform, the capability to “see” reflections out to 2 kilometers with no dead zone, and integrated temperature and strain sensing, the OBR 4400 gives you the ultimate in fiber diagnostics. The OBR 4400 uses swept-wavelength coherent interferometry to measure minute reflections (< 0.0003 parts per billion) in an optical system as a function of length with spatial resolution less than 50 microns. This provides the user with precision reflectometry and unprecedented optical-module inspection and diagnostic capabilities by providing the ability to locate and troubleshoot splices, connectors, fiber bends and breaks, insertion loss points, track polarization, verify PM components and more.

ADVANTAGES:

• High resolution OTDR - Resolve individual features with spatial resolution down to 10 microns.
• High sensitivity – 70 dB of dynamic range and -125 dB sensitivity.
• Long range – Measure up to 2000 meters in length with a single connection, single scan.
• Single Connection IL and RL – Measure insertion and return loss in a single scan.
• Locate loss events – Monitor backscatter levels to isolate losses due to bends, crimps, bad splices, etc.
• “Look inside” devices – Use powerful windowing feature to interrogate individual components within a subsystem.
• Polarization Tracking – Track changes in the state-of-polarization as light propagates through an optical network.
• Distributed sensing - use standard optical fiber to monitor the changes in temperature and strain

Learn more about Luna Technologies' OBR 4400.

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