In recent years reliability has become a key topic for network providers because of the increasing complexity and economic importance of their systems. In order to avoid high costs resulting from downtimes of the system and maintenance it is mandatory to include reliability considerations already in the design of networks. This requires a precise knowledge of the expected lifetime of the components of the network. A method for the quantitative assessment of the reliability of passive fiber optic components is described in the IEC standard 62005-2, Part 2.
In this paper, we present the reliability assessment of planar fiberoptic 1x8-splitters as an example for the application of the above mentioned IEC standard. The failure rates resulting from wear out mechanisms are determined by a life test matrix with accelerated aging induced by extreme climatic conditions and extrapolation to service conditions. With 6000 hours under 85°C/85% r.h. without any failure the tested components also exceed the requirements given in Telcordia GR 1221. In addition to climatic tests, vibration and impact tests have been performed in order to prove the mechanical integrity of the splitters.
A second failure class besides wear out failures are random failures which occur at a constant rate. Due to the nature of random failures they can not be accelerated in any kind of laboratory tests. Thus the random failure rate of the components is calculated from field data. The observation of 16,000 devices with a total of more than 300 million service hours shows a FIT-rate for random failure which is below 10 FIT.
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