Introduce To Plastic Optical Fiber Cable

In an effort reduce cost, many of the metal and ceramic components in optical fiber connectors are being replaced by plastic or polymer materials.Eliminating metal from fiber optic connectors has the advantage of improving electromagnetic radiation susceptibility, since the other components of a typical Fiber Optic Cable are non-conductive.For example,radiation is generated by electronic equipment,which can escape from the receptacle of a fiber optic transceiver;metallic elements in the fiber connector act like antennas to re-radiate these emissions ,possibly causing interference with either the original circuit board or with nearby unshielded electrical cables.In this manner, a product with various transceivers such as a fiber optics switch may pass electromagnetic noise emission testing with no fiber cables attached, but may fail if fiber cables with metal elements are plugged into the transceiver ports.

While ferrules in most optical connectors are traditionally made of ceramic there, are only a few companies in the world that manufacture these ferrules to the precision tolerances required.This can lead to complexity problems when there is a high demand for optical fiber ;it also means that multimode ferrules may become scarce,as production lines migrate to higher volume single mode parts ,with improvements in the single mode ferrule manufacturing process,yields are high and there is very little product that can be recycled into multimedia ferrules with their less restrictive tolerances.As a result, countless companies are investigating plastic or polymer ferrules to address high volume requirements and to reduce the cost of optical connector manufacturing.New polishing techniques need to be developed for plastic ferrules; there are also concerns with reliability and damage to the ferrule after hundreds of mating cycles.Plastic ferrules are just emerging as a viable alternative to ceramics, and are expected to play an increasingly important role in future cable systems.

This effort begs the question of whether the fiber itself could be replaced by plastic, at least for applications that can use transmission wavelengths not highly attenuated by the extra material,.Although most optical fibers are made of doped silica glass, Plastic Optical Fiber Cable  are also available;these are commonly used in applications that do not require long trtansmission distances ,such as medical instrumentation,automobile and aricraft control systems,and consumer electronics,in fact, short pieces of plastic fiber with lareg corees have already been used in optical loopbacks and wrap plugs ,due to their low cost and ease of alonnment with both mulitimode and isngle mode transceivers,the short lengths required for a multimode and single mode transceivers,the short lengths required for a loopback mean that attenuation is not a issue ,and in some cased the high attenuationi of short plastice fibes is an advantage because it prevents saturation of the transceiives,however ,there is some interest in suing plastic fiber for very low cost data communication liks especilly for the small office/home offices environment ,the combination of simplified alignment with optical soureces and detectors as well as the low cost of visible optical sources makes platic optical fibr cost competitive for some applicationos ,plastic fibers are also very easy to connectorize,with minimal tranining and very simple tools,and amateur can connectgorize bare plastice fiber in few minutes .

By contrast ,glasss fiber requires highly tranied technicaisn and expensive equipment ,this is major difference,and one fo the reasons for interest in Simplex Fiber Optic Cable for the do-it youself ,installations of homes and small offices ,as signifficant inhibitor to wider hused of optical links in this enviroment is the high cost of installatoin compared with the more reasonable cost of hardware and raw materials,simplx fiber links are also used with visible light sources around 570 to 650 nm wavelength ;this makes alignment of the fibers easier to perform ,and high -power visible sources are readliy availale at low cost,a major drawvack to plastic fiber is the difficulty in creating fusion splices with acceptable attenuation ,typical splices losse are about 5db.