Plastic Optical Fiber Transmission Principle

Glass fiber has a dominant position in optical communication. But it has some fatal weakness including the low intensity, poor anti-bending performance, and bad resistance to radiation. For nearly 20 years, scientists have been looking for a new transmission medium and finaly they found plastic optical fiber as a medium is feasible in the light transmission and carried it out in real life for some applications.

Commercial products those are made of plastic optical fiber have been widely applied in some areas, such as lighting, information transmission. Even, plastic optical fiber has been able to replace the glass fiber in some areas. This article is about the transmission principles of plastic optical fiber.

POF (short for plastic optical fiber) has a step-type structure of the fiber core skin. Refers to the radial plane containing optical axes of the plane, called Meridian, is the propagation path of light which is always in the same plane. The radial light and optical axis is always the intersection of light propagation in a homogeneous medium that is a linear spread.

When light transmits from one medium to another medium surface, the general simultaneous reflection and refraction if the light from the refractive index of light thinning small medium large refractive index of light launches into dense medium. And when the light from the light launches into optical media thinning dense medium angle of refraction will be greater than the incident angle, so that when light from the light launches into optical thinning dense medium, it is likely to occur only when the medium without refraction reflection phenomenon, which is total reflection. Total reflection is a boundary effect of light refraction, for example, from one transparent medium into another medium in which curved phenomenon. POF is through the principle of total internal reflection of light transmission.

Only when the external light incident angle is less than 0, the light to the fiber by total reflection in the form of forward spread, spreads from one end of optical fiber the other end. So the critical acceptance angle of fiber 0. Therefore, total internal reflection-type is zigzag manner in SIPOF. As radial fiber is not the same incident light angle, Guer geometry in the fiber is not the same itinerary. Meridian in the light of both the trip times of reflection formula or formula, it is assumed that fiber is in very good condition. Fiber is straight, uniform diameter fiber, optical fiber and optical fiber within the defect-free straight face such incident. If the fiber did not have the ideal conditions, the incidence of radial total reflection would change the situation, if any, would be reflected out from the fiber, and some reflection angle would change and so on, so the fiber transmission loss will increase.

For graded refractive index GIPOF, also has radial and oblique light, this is not a constant optical constants of refractive index, but with increasing distance off-axis refractive index decreased; parabolic refractive index distribution mode optical fiber has low dispersion characteristics, reflects the distribution of various forms of gradient, when the refractive index distribution by quadratic parabolic distribution, the radial spread of the path in the fiber type for the sine curve, the spread of the light path inclined spiral curve , graded refractive index POF are used for short-distance data transmission, fiber optic lighting for small. This optical transmission of laser energy distribution close to Gauss distribution, that is, near the fiber axis there is a higher density of light energy which is more focused laser energy, the transmission of laser power density.

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