Fiber Lightguides

Fiber lightguides offer a flexible, low optical loss, high bandwidth transmission media for transport of information such as voice, data and video. This talk will review fiber lightguide materials, designs and fabrication technology with special emphasis on silica-based lightguide technology currently used for optical transmission in the 0.6 - 1.6um spectral region. In addition, other speciality fibers such as plastics, polarization maintaining fibers, and longer wavelength fiber optic materials (2 -12um) will be reviewed.