Plastic Optical Fibers: Pipe-dream or Reality?

There has been interest in plastic optical fibers (POF) since the advent of optical fiber communications. The dream has been to build extremely low-cost optical networks from POF manufactured with inexpensive, continuous extrusion processes. Large-diameter POF can be used due to the low elastic modulus of polymers. This relaxes the alignment tolerance needed in these networks which can dramatically decrease overall system costs since simple injection-molded connectors can be used. Installation costs are also expected to be substantially lower due to simpler end-face preparation techniques. To balance all these potential advantages, there have been a number of issues preventing the widespread adoption of POF. However, recent research results offer the promise of finally overcoming some of these obstacles.