Plastic optical fibers: properties and practical applications

Driven by the increasing data traffic and the increasing demand for bandwidth optical fiber technologies play a greater role in todays and future data-communication networks. Although the well-known silica fiber have the potential of achieving very large bandwidth, this fiber is not the ideal medium for high bit rate data-communication for office and home applications because its small dimension requires well sophisticated components as well as installation technologies. This increases the total system cost, inevitably. However, the technologies of plastic (polymer) optical fibers (POF) and the devices for POF nowadays show rapid process /2/. So, we could benefit from the special advantages of these fibers over a wide field of applications, from decoration to local networks, including lighting, image guides and sensor technique. Today, inexpensive and robust POF transmission systems are available on the market with high bit rate capacity. Bus-systems, e.g. MOST and Byteflight, are applied in the rough automotive environment