High Speed Polymer Optical Fiber and Related Photonics Polymer

With the growing interest focused on the broadband network systems, optical fiber network for high speed telecommunication becomes more important in the premise network area. Silica base single mode fiber is an ideal medium for long distance communication because of its high transparency and high bandwidth, while its much low attenuation is minor advantage in the short distance network. As many data distributions and fiber connections are required in the premises wiring and LANs, low coupling and distribution losses must be maintained. Therefore, we have proposed a large-core, high-bandwidth graded-index polymer optical fiber (GI POF) for high speed data "transmission" medium, and we succeeded in several gigabit transmission in 100 m GI POF link. However, as the GI POF was composed of poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA), its high attenuation of transmission limited the GI POF link length to approximately 100 m. Recently we proposed the low-loss perfluorinated (PF) polymer base GI POF which enables more than 300-m transmission with maintaining high data rate.