Plastic Optical Fiber and FTTH Application

Currently, most of fiber-optic communications cables are basically using quartz fiber with high purity silica SiO₂, by adding an appropriate amount of dopant composition.

Plastic Optical Fiber (POF)

Plastic optical fiber (POF), or Polymer optical fibre, is an optical fiber which is made out of plastic. POF produced materials are mainly divided as two types:

• One is polymethyl methacrylate polymer PMMA (Polymer lymethylmethacrylate);
• And the other is a fluoropolymer (Perfluorinated polymers).

POF has been called the “consumer” optical fiber because the fiber and associated optical links, connectors, and installation are all inexpensive. Due to the attenuation and distortion characteristics of the traditional PMMA fibers are commonly used for low-speed, short-distance (up to 100 meters) applications in digital home appliances, home networks, industrial networks (PROFIBUS, PROFINET), and car networks (MOST). The perfluorinated polymer fibers are commonly used for much higher-speed applications such as data center wiring and building LAN wiring.

Plastic Optical Fiber (FOT Product)

Performance indicators

1. Attenuation

The plastic optical fiber scattering loss depends on the attenuation of the chosen material and the absorption loss. To grade plastic optical fiber as a communication tool, a basic requirement is PMMA plastic optical fiber attenuation should be lower and preferably less than 180dB/km. (Attenuation loss is about 1 dB/m @ 650 nm.)

2. Bandwidth

Plastic optical fiber is a graded- refractive index gradient of the optical fiber, and its’ refractive index was gradually decreased from the core to the cladding. Bandwidth is ~5 MHz-km @ 650 nm.

3. Heat resistance

Most importantly, the heat resistance is based on the properties of the main components of the plastic optical fiber.

Good eat resistance material composition makes the plastic optical fiber having a relatively good heat resistance. The heat resistance of a material can indicated by a glass transition temperature, Vicat softening point, heat distortion temperature and other indicators.

4. Connectivity

In some communication applications, thick plastic optical fiber’s connection is better than quartz fiber.

Superiority

Plastic optical fiber is light, soft, and resistant to damage (vibration and bending). Plastic optical fiber has excellent tensile strength, durability and a small size features. These advantages make the plastic optical fiber particularly important to the various applications.

FTTH Box

In FTTH, FTTD (fiber to the desktop) end-to-end application program, the plastic optical fiber is a supplement to the quartz fiber network, which can work together to build an all-optical solution system.  

Moreover, in LAN project system, POF network also has significant advantages, if compared with other transmission media: POF is not sensitive to electromagnetic interference , no radiation occurs , with constant attenuation for different data rates, and the error rate can be predicted, even can be used in an electrically noisy environment…

POF in FTTH Application

Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) in FTTH

As the diagram show above, POF network could be hugely improve the convenience of the traditional “Last-Mile-Access” solution, such as xDSL, HFC or the Triple Solution (DATA, Voice and CATV multimedia service etc.). 

With the help of the Plastic optical fiber (POF), even the traditional FTTH PON solution would be upgraded to another high level.

Users can easy build a distance-extend EPON optical access system together with this popular FOT optical EPON MDU, which can be 200 meter distance far away than traditional LAN solution.

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