Commonly, when talking about optical fibers, people refer to the glass-made fibers. However, there are multiple different types of optical fibers. Good example is POF (Plastic or Polymer Optical Fibers) which use plastic-based materials instead of glass ones. Recent researches allowed to increase performance of POF based solution. Success of these researches allowed POF to be used as standard for MOST (Media Oriented Systems Transport).
There is a wide variety of different types of POF, depending on core dimensions. Performance of the POF depends on these parameters.
PMMA (PolyMethylMethAcrylate or Plexiglas) is the most common type of plastic used in POF. Components that use PMMA can work with high attenuation, but are supposed to use visible light. One of the benefits of using POF is the high-temperature, humidity, and water tolerance. Depending on material it could work at temperatures up to 80 C.
As it is visible from Figure 1, there are two main families of POF materials – which have different performances.
Figure 1. Overview of the different types of POF.
Testimonials
Lomoveishiy – Finland
I needed those to connect my PC on the third floor to have internet access in that room, and ISP installed their modem on the first floor only. After dropping fiber patch cables, plugged in all cables into these media converters at both sides, and link came up instantly. Was much easier than I thought!
