Plastic Optical Fibres (POF)

Abstract

As the name implies plastic optical fibres (POF) are made entirely from plastic or polymeric materials. These fibres were first introduced about twenty years ago, but it is during the last five years or so that a new impetus in their further development and use is observed. The main reason for this is the fact that they can offer a cheaper and more cost-effective solution than glass optical fibres (GOF) in many applications where the basic advantages of fibre optics are essential but over relatively short distances. The attenuation of POF is typically two orders of magnitude (~200 dB/km) higher than that of GOF (0.4-10 dB/km) and this represents the most serious disadvantage of POF when compared with GOF. However POF offer a number of advantages such as greater flexibility and less susceptibility to transmission variations due to vibrations. They have a large numerical aperture (NA), typically 0.47, which makes them more suitable for use with low-cost light-emitting diodes, and they also have a large core diameter (0.5-1 mm) which makes alignment and interconnections easy with simple inexpensive injection moulded connectors.