Present prospect of graded-index plastic optical fiber in telecommunication

The status of the plastic optical fiber (POF) for high-speed data communication is described. Very recently, the low-loss and high-bandwidth perfluorinated GI POF which has no serious absorption loss from visible to 1.3-mu m wavelength was successfully prepared at Keio University. Since the core diameter (300-1000 mu m) of the GI POF is much larger than that of the multimode silica fiber (62.5 mu m), the serious modal noise in the conventional multimode silica fiber was virtually eliminated, resulting in stable giga bit order data transmission with inexpensive couplers and connectors.