20.1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter describes the polymer optical fiber (POF), probably one of the fiber types with the highest loss and the smallest bandwidth. Nevertheless, it is the only optical fiber that can be installed by everyone without any special tool. That is why the potential of POF systems is very high.

20.2 POF BASICS

The first POFs were manufactured by DuPont as early as the late 1960s. Because of the incomplete purification of the source materials used, optical attenuation values remained in the vicinity of 1000 dB/km. During the 1970s, it became possible to reduce losses nearly to the theoretical limit of approximately 125 dB/km at a wavelength of 650 nm. At that point, glass fibers with losses significantly below 1 dB/km at 1300 nm/1550 nm were already available in large quantities and at low prices. Digital transmission systems with a high bit rate were then almost exclusively used in telecommunications for long-range transmissions. The field of local computer networks was dominated by copper cables (either twisted-pair or coaxial) that were completely satisfactory for the typical data rates of up to 10 megabits per second (Mbps) commonly used then. There was hardly any demand for an optical medium for high data rates and small distances, so the development of the POF was slowed down for many years. A significant indicator for this is that at the beginning of the 1990s, the company Hoechst stopped manufacturing polymer fibers.

During the 1990s after...