Optical Fiber Communications 4th Edition by Gerd Keiser

Exercise 14

Suppose the optical power emerging from a feeder fiber is to be distributed among eight individual houses. Assume that they are separated by 100 m and lie along a straight line going out from the end of the feeder fiber. One way to distribute the power is to use a 1 × 8 star coupler and run individual fibers to each house. Why is this preferable to the configuration where a single fiber runs along the line to the homes and individual tap couplers in the fiber line each extract 10 percent of the power from the line for each house that the line passes