Experimental research on radiation characteristics of optical fibers

In order to study the feasibility of using the commercial optical fibers as space satellite bus, the on-line and off-line experiments were conducted by the Co60 radiation source irradiating Corning SMF-28 and Alcatel 6900 with the radiation dose rate of 15.11 Gy/min. The result of the experiments shows that in the on-line experiment, the induced loss of Alcatel optical fiber increases faster than that of Corning optical fiber with the increase of radiation dose. When the radiation dose reaches 800 Gy, the induced loss of Corning optical fiber comes into a saturated region, and the induced loss of Alcatel optical fiber still maintains linearly increasing. In the off-line experiment, the induced loss of Corning optical fiber decreases with the time and becomes stable in the end. The Alcatel optical fiber appears an opposite trend, but also becomes stable after a long time. The commercial fiber used in space fiber bus has little effect on the system budget.