High Performance Spatial Filter Array Based on Single Mode Fiber Bundle

In Phase I project, by leveraging on Agiltron's experience in optical fiber components and our unique fabrication procedure of fiber array, we successfully designed and fabricated the samples of the gradient index fiber (GIF) lens arrays and single mode (SM) fiber arrays for composing a coherent single-mode fiber (SMF) spatial filter array (SFA), which demonstrated the promising results to meet NASA's requirements for the applications in planet exploration. This novel GIF and SMF array based SFA has several advantages over the current approach in small aberration, low insertion loss, high uniformity, high robust and stability. In Phase II, Agiltron will further improve and optimize the fabrication procedure to make the prototype of GIF and SMF array based SFA for NASA applications. This SFA prototype will have more than 1000 effective fiber counts in the requested aperture. Furthermore, the improvements of precision fabrication procedure developed in Phase I will assure that center-to-center deviation in GIF and SMF arrays' deviation is less than +/-0.2�m. At the end of the Phase II, the novel SFA prototype will be provided with fully function integration and environmental test to insert into the experiment system of NASA for further comprehensive evaluation.