The Multifunctional Measurement System For Planar Optical Waveguide Devices Based On LabVIEW

The rapid development of science and technology, promote the continuous improvement of people’s cultural life level. Vast amounts of information and more and more equipment is being developed in the direction of network and intelligent, which is to continue to improve the transmission capacity of the network. Optical fiber communication is one of the main means to meet people’s long distance and large capacity. After decades of continuous development, more and more technology has been applied to optical fiber communication system, the typical technology such as wavelength division multiplexing(WDM) technology has been widely used. In optical fiber communication system, a large number of optoelectronic devices, such as wavelength division multiplexer, modulator, beam splitter, amplifier, optical switch, etc., are used in optical network. Most of these devices are discrete devices, the current development trend is undoubtedly the direction of integrated development. The planar optical waveguide devices is being paid more and more attention, compared to the planar optical waveguide devices with the traditional optical communication device, in terms of geometry size and device reliability, especially in cost,it has more obvious advantages. In the material selection, not only inorganic materials but also polymer materials can be used, and the preparation process is simple, and it is more suitable for mass production. With the increasing of the types of electronic products, the application of optical waveguide devices is becoming more and more popular. From the daily household electronic eqiupments to the multimedia computer,mobile phone and automotive electronics, the electronic products with embedded optical waveguide devices are almost everywhere. In order to meet the growing demand for optical waveguide devices, as well as the need to diversify the optical waveguide devices, manufacturers are required to improve the production capacity and optimize the production process. Optical waveguide device manufacturers in the optical waveguide device design phase, the optical waveguide device parameters and the various functions of the detailed testing, in order to be able to find product defects and optimize testing procedures, so as to ensure that the optical waveguide devices in the formal mass production can have a high stability and reliability.Planar optical waveguide device is a high precision optical device, and it needs precise instrument and equipment for measuring the performance parameters. Virtual instrumentation(VI) technology is at the beginning of the 1990 s, a kind of test technology, it will many formerly done by the hardware of signal processing, and processed by the computer software, the tester software function of the hardware, to test instrument brought profound changes, with the rapid development of computer technology, virtual instrument is gradually becoming the development direction of the testing field. Lab VIEW is the National Instrument(NI) company launched graphical programming development platform, with a strong real-time data processing functions and display functions. It uses the visual programming interface, using the icon representing the function module, using the connection between icons to represent the data transmission between the modules. After many years of development, Lab VIEW has become the industry standard in the field of measurement and testing. At the same time, Lab VIEW inherits the advantages of structured and modular programming of advanced programming languages, supporting the design of modular and hierarchical structure, which enhances the readability of the program.Planar optical waveguide testing system is a non- standard product, most of which use the existing equipment to build, and most of them need manual adjustment. In order to further improve the performance of equipment purchased, the main function to reach the general testing system, this paper use Lab VIEW programming, design and complete a planar optical waveguide test system based on Lab VIEW, the main research work is to control four main instruments, which are optical waveguide devices currently used in testing: tunable laser(Santec: TSL210), dual channel optical power meter(ANDO AQ8203), the signal source(Model: DG4062) and the oscilloscope(Model: DS4024).Based on Lab VIEW control program, the data acquisition and control circuit of laser and optical power meter are connected through the GPIB bus controller and data acquisition card, signal source and oscilloscope through USB is connected with the control computer interface in the control of computer, using Lab VIEW programming to control the four instruments, the established of optical waveguide device testing system can control these instruments, the corresponding programming and modulation is completed, thereafter, the main performance parameters of the planar optical waveguide thermo-optic switch device preparation were tested. The practical test results show that the test system can meet the program control test of planar optical waveguide devices such as beam splitter, modulator, optical switch and so on. This paper studies the development of the program controlled planar optical waveguide device testing system, which has the advantages of friendly user interface, low cost, easy to expand and so on. It has high scientific research and practical value. It can not only save the test time and improve the testing accuracy, but also improve the efficiency of the research.