High-Speed Communications Over Polymer Optical Fibers for In-Building Cabling and Home Networking

• Main Authors: A. Nespola, S. Abrate, R. Gaudino, C. Zerna, B. Offenbeck, N. Weber
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2010-01-01
• Series: IEEE Photonics Journal
• Subjects: Communications; Ethernet; home networks; polymer optical fibers (POF)
• Online Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5447708/

This paper focuses on high-speed cabling using polymer optical fibers (POF) in home networking. In particular, we report about the results obtained in the POF-ALL European Project, which is relevant to the Sixth Framework Program, and after two years of the European Project POF-PLUS, which is relevant to the Seventh Framework Program, focusing on their research activities about the use of poly-metyl-metha-acrilate step-index optical fibers for home applications. In particular, for that which concerns POF-ALL, we will describe eight-level pulse amplitude modulation (8-PAM) and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) approaches for 100-Mb/s transmission over a target distance of 300 m, while for that which concerns POF-PLUS, we will describe a fully digital and a mixed analog-digital solution, both based on intensity modulation direct detection, for transmitting 1 Gb/s over a target distance of 50 m. The ultimate experimental results from the POF-ALL project will be given, while for POF-PLUS, which is still ongoing, we will only show our most recent preliminary results.