RGB wavelength multiplexer based on polycarbonate multicore polymer optical fiber

Abstract

One of the common techniques to increase data bitrate using visible light communication (VLC) fibers system is to use wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). However, the implementation of WDM requires additional devices and more power consumption which can limit the system performances. To overcome these problems, we propose a new approach for designing an RGB multiplexer based on multicore polymer optical fiber (MC-POF). The new configuration is based on replacing seven air-holes regions with polycarbonate (PC) layers along the fiber length. The PC layer length sizes are suitable to the light coupling of the operating wavelengths which allows us to control the light switching between closer PC layers and to obtain an RGB multiplexer device without adding more devices. The locations and the sizes of the PC layers along the fiber length and the key geometrical parameters of the MC-POF were studied and optimized utilizing the beam propagation method (BPM). Results show that after a 20 mm light propagation the PC MC-POF RGB multiplexer can be obtained with a low power loss of 0.6 to 1.02 dB, large bandwidth of 7.3 to 28.4 nm and good isolation between the transmission of the input R/G/B channels.