A low cost short haul plastic optical fiber link for home networking applications

Abstract

The digitization era has brought with itself more expectations for communication systems, specially home networking applications which involves low cost as well as moderately high speed data links. Optical communication links are being highly explored for communication system especially Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) due to its advantages of lower cost, ease of handling and installation. These features are of specific importance as the user operating at home gets an ease of using POF based system against the Glass Optical Fiber (GOF) Links. However design of these links are equally challenging due to their lower bandwidths and higher attenuation characteristics. In this paper we present a low cost solution for an error free 100 Mbps and 100 m length Plastic Optic Fiber (POF) based home networking system using LED and 1 mm diameter Step Index (SI) Poly methyl Metha-acrylate (PMMA) POF without equalization and Forward Error Correction(FEC). Using LED as a source highly reduces the system cost as well as complexity. We also discuss modulation techniques like 4-PAM(Pulse Amplitude Modulation) and their implementation which has its own advantages of spectral efficiency. We discuss the design of the physical layer for the above link using power budget and rise-time analyses and its implementation employing commercially available LED, POF and PIN photo-detectors.