Plastic optical fiber (POF) or polymer optical fiber is an optical fiber that is made out of polymer. Similar to glass optical fiber, POF transmits light (for illumination or data) through the core of the fiber. Its chief advantage over the glass product, other aspect being equal, is its robustness under bending and stretching.
Since 2014 a full family of PHY transceivers have been available in the market enabling the design and manufacturing of home networking equipment delivering Gigabit speeds into the home.[ citation needed ]
One of the most exciting developments in polymer fibers has been the development of microstructured polymer optical fibers (mPOF), a type of photonic crystal fiber.[ citation needed ]
Traditionally, PMMA (acrylic) comprises the core (96% of the cross section in a fiber 1mm in diameter), and fluorinated polymers are the cladding material. Since the late 1990s much higher performance graded-index (GI-POF) fiber based on amorphous fluoropolymer (poly(perfluoro-butenylvinyl ether), CYTOP [1] ) has begun to appear in the marketplace. [2] [3] Polymer optical fibers are typically manufactured using extrusion, in contrast to the method of pulling used for glass fibers.
POF has been called the "consumer" optical fiber because the fiber and associated optical links, connectors, and installation are all inexpensive. Due to the attenuation and distortion characteristics of PMMA fibers, they are commonly used for low-speed, short-distance (up to 100 meters) applications in digital home appliances, home networks, industrial networks (PROFIBUS, PROFINET, Sercos, EtherCAT), and car networks (MOST). The perfluorinated polymer fibers are commonly used for much higher-speed applications such as data center wiring and building LAN wiring.
In relation to the future requirements of high-speed home networking, there has been an increasing interest in POF as a possible option for next-generation Gigabit/s links inside the home. To this end, several European Research projects are active, such as POF-ALL and POF-PLUS .
Polymer optical fibers can be used for remote sensing and multiplexing due to their low cost and high resistance. [5]
It is possible to write fiber Bragg gratings in single and multimode POF. There are advantages in doing this over using silica fiber since the POF can be stretched further without breaking, some applications are described in the PHOSFOS project page.
Optical fiber used in telecommunications is governed by European Standards EN 60793-2-40-2011.
Several standardization bodies at country, European, and worldwide levels are currently developing Gigabit communication standards for POF aimed towards home networking applications. It is expected the release at the beginning of 2012.
An IEEE study group and later task force has been meeting since then until the publication on 2017 of the IEEE802.3bv Amendment. IEEE 802.3bv defines a 1 Gigabit/s full duplex transmission over SI-POF using red LED. It is called 1000BASE-RH.
This Gigabit POF IEEE standard is based on multilevel PAM modulation a frame structure, Tomlinson-Harashima Precoding and Multilevel coset coding modulation. The combination of all these techniques has proven to be an efficient way of achieving low-cost implementations at the same time that the transmission theoretical maximum capacity of the POF is approached.[ citation needed ]
Other alternatives are schemes like DMT, PAM-2 NRZ, DFE equalization or PAM-4. VDE standard was published in 2013. [6] After the publication the IEEE asked VDE to withdraw the specification and bring all the effort to IEEE. VDE withdrew the specification and a CFI was presented to IEEE in March 2014. [7]
In telecommunications and fiber optics, a plastic-clad silica fiber or polymer-clad silica fiber (PCS) is an optical fiber that has a silica-based core and a plastic cladding. The cladding of a PCS fiber should not be confused with the polymer overcoat of a conventional all-silica fiber.
In computer networking, Fast Ethernet physical layers carry traffic at the nominal rate of 100 Mbit/s. The prior Ethernet speed was 10 Mbit/s. Of the Fast Ethernet physical layers, 100BASE-TX is by far the most common.
In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use in 1999, and has replaced Fast Ethernet in wired local networks due to its considerable speed improvement over Fast Ethernet, as well as its use of cables and equipment that are widely available, economical, and similar to previous standards. The first standard for faster 10 Gigabit Ethernet was approved in 2002.
All-silica fiber, or silica-silica fiber, is an optical fiber whose core and cladding are made of silica glass. The refractive index of the core glass is higher than that of the cladding. These fibers are typically step-index fibers. The cladding of an all-silica fiber should not be confused with the polymer overcoat of the fiber.
A passive optical network (PON) is a fiber-optic telecommunications technology for delivering broadband network access to end-customers. Its architecture implements a point-to-multipoint topology in which a single optical fiber serves multiple endpoints by using unpowered (passive) fiber optic splitters to divide the fiber bandwidth among the endpoints. Passive optical networks are often referred to as the last mile between an Internet service provider (ISP) and its customers. Many fiber ISPs prefer this technology.
Multi-mode optical fiber is a type of optical fiber mostly used for communication over short distances, such as within a building or on a campus. Multi-mode links can be used for data rates up to 100 Gbit/s. Multi-mode fiber has a fairly large core diameter that enables multiple light modes to be propagated and limits the maximum length of a transmission link because of modal dispersion. The standard G.651.1 defines the most widely used forms of multi-mode optical fiber.
An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber and find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths than electrical cables. Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel along them with less loss; in addition, fibers are immune to electromagnetic interference, a problem from which metal wires suffer. Fibers are also used for illumination and imaging, and are often wrapped in bundles so they may be used to carry light into, or images out of confined spaces, as in the case of a fiberscope. Specially designed fibers are also used for a variety of other applications, some of them being fiber optic sensors and fiber lasers.
The physical-layer specifications of the Ethernet family of computer network standards are published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which defines the electrical or optical properties and the transfer speed of the physical connection between a device and the network or between network devices. It is complemented by the MAC layer and the logical link layer.
Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of infrared or visible light through an optical fiber. The light is a form of carrier wave that is modulated to carry information. Fiber is preferred over electrical cabling when high bandwidth, long distance, or immunity to electromagnetic interference is required. This type of communication can transmit voice, video, and telemetry through local area networks or across long distances.
40 Gigabit Ethernet (40GbE) and 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE) are groups of computer networking technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at rates of 40 and 100 gigabits per second (Gbit/s), respectively. These technologies offer significantly higher speeds than 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The technology was first defined by the IEEE 802.3ba-2010 standard and later by the 802.3bg-2011, 802.3bj-2014, 802.3bm-2015, and 802.3cd-2018 standards. The first succeeding Terabit Ethernet specifications were approved in 2017.
A fiber-optic cable, also known as an optical-fiber cable, is an assembly similar to an electrical cable but containing one or more optical fibers that are used to carry light. The optical fiber elements are typically individually coated with plastic layers and contained in a protective tube suitable for the environment where the cable is used. Different types of cable are used for optical communication in different applications, for example long-distance telecommunication or providing a high-speed data connection between different parts of a building.
The 10 Gbit/s Ethernet Passive Optical Network standard, better known as 10G-EPON allows computer network connections over telecommunication provider infrastructure. The standard supports two configurations: symmetric, operating at 10 Gbit/s data rate in both directions, and asymmetric, operating at 10 Gbit/s in the downstream direction and 1 Gbit/s in the upstream direction. It was ratified as IEEE 802.3av standard in 2009. EPON is a type of passive optical network, which is a point-to-multipoint network using passive fiber-optic splitters rather than powered devices for fan-out from hub to customers.
10 Gigabit Ethernet is a group of computer networking technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of 10 gigabits per second. It was first defined by the IEEE 802.3ae-2002 standard. Unlike previous Ethernet standards, 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) defines only full-duplex point-to-point links which are generally connected by network switches; shared-medium CSMA/CD operation has not been carried over from the previous generations of Ethernet standards so half-duplex operation and repeater hubs do not exist in 10GbE. The first standard for faster 100 Gigabit Ethernet links was approved in 2010.
Hard-clad silica (HCS) or polymer-clad fiber (PCF) is an optical fiber with a core of silica glass and an optical cladding made of special plastic. In contrast to all-silica fiber, the core and cladding can be separated from each other.
PhoSFOS is a research and technology development project co-funded by the European Commission.
Terabit Ethernet or TbE is Ethernet with speeds above 100 Gigabit Ethernet. 400 Gigabit Ethernet and 200 Gigabit Ethernet standards developed by the IEEE P802.3bs Task Force using broadly similar technology to 100 Gigabit Ethernet were approved on December 6, 2017. In 2016, several networking equipment suppliers were already offering proprietary solutions for 200G and 400G.
A fiber-optic patch cord is a fiber-optic cable capped at either end with connectors that allow it to be rapidly and conveniently connected to CATV, an optical switch or other telecommunication equipment. Its thick layer of protection is used to connect the optical transmitter, receiver, and the terminal box. This is known as "interconnect-style cabling".
25 Gigabit Ethernet and 50 Gigabit Ethernet are standards for Ethernet connectivity in a datacenter environment, developed by IEEE 802.3 task forces 802.3by and 802.3cd and are available from multiple vendors.
IEEE 802.3bz, NBASE-T and MGBASE-T are standards for Ethernet over twisted pair at speeds of 2.5 and 5 Gbit/s. These use the same cabling as the ubiquitous Gigabit Ethernet, yet offer higher speeds. The resulting standards are named 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T.
An optical module is a typically hot-pluggable optical transceiver used in high-bandwidth data communications applications. Optical modules typically have an electrical interface on the side that connects to the inside of the system and an optical interface on the side that connects to the outside world through a fiber optic cable. The form factor and electrical interface are often specified by an interested group using a multi-source agreement (MSA). Optical modules can either plug into a front panel socket or an on-board socket. Sometimes the optical module is replaced by an electrical interface module that implements either an active or passive electrical connection to the outside world. A large industry supports the manufacturing and use of optical modules.
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