Calibration of optical fiber power meters: the effect of connectors

This paper addresses the question of accurate measurement of optical power at the wavelengths and power levels of interest to the telecommunications community. In particular, we examine the calibration of power meters that are destined for use in a field environment. Connectors and adapters are shown to skew the measurements, leading to errors attributable to reflections from the connector or to angular dependence of detector response. Calibration data are taken using two popular connector types: a biconic and an SMA type. The data are sufficient to illustrate the problem but definitive conclusions cannot be drawn regarding variability of performance with connector or connector type, because of the limited data.