Alexander Bachmann

Beyond the bandwidth-length product: Graded index microstructured polymer optical fiber

Large core multimode polymer fibers for high data rate transmission are an important growth area. The conventional approach to reducing the intermodal dispersion in such fibers is to use a graded index (GI) profile. More recently, microstructures rather than differences in chemical composition have been used to produce the GI structure. We compare the bandwidth performance of two GI microstructured fibers to a conventional GI fiber made from the same material. The microstructured fibers not only show excellent bandwidth performance but also their bandwidth has an unconventional length dependence: no additional pulse broadening beyond a characteristic length.

Microstructured polymer optical fibres for communication

The most likely area where mPOF will have applications in communication is for short distance high bit rate transmission. Particularly important may be applications which require visible wavelengths and large cores for ease of connection.

Future directions for microstructured polymer optical fibers

Microstructured Polymer Optical Fibers (MPOF) were first made in 2001, and subsequent development has aimed at exploiting the material and design opportunities they present. Most effort has been focused on developing approaches for high bandwidth MPOF, and investigating the properties of multimode microstructured fibers. We also consider new applications in endoscopy and photonic interconnects, as well as the use of organic dopants in MPOF.