Polymer Optical Fibres (POFs) show clear advantages compared to copper and glass fibres. In essence, POFs are inexpensive, space-saving and not susceptible to electromagnetic interference. Thus, the usage of POFs have become a reasonable alternative in short distance data communication. Today, POFs are applied in a wide number of applications due to these specific advantages. These applications include automotive communication systems and in-house-networks. State-of-the-art is to transmit data with only one channel over POF, this limits the bandwidth. To solve this problem, an integrated MUX/DEMUX-element for WDM over POF is designed and developed to use multiple channels. This integration leads to low costs, therefore this component is suitable for mass market applications. The fundamental idea is to separate the chromatic parts of the light in its monochromatic components by means of a grating based on an aspheric mirror. Due to the high NA of the POF the setup has to be designed in a 3D-approach. Therefore this setup cannot be compared with the planar solutions available on market, they would result high losses in the 3rd dimension. To achieve a fast and optimized design an optical simulation program is used. Particular attention has to be paid to the design of the POF as a light source in the simulation program and the optimisation of the grating. The following realization of the demultiplexer is planed to be done with injection molding. This technology offers easy and very economical processing. These advantages make this technology first choice for optical components in the low-cost array.

Date Published: 26 January 2009
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 7234, Broadband Access Communication Technologies III, 72340C (26 January 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.808744

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7234:
Broadband Access Communication Technologies III
Benjamin B. Dingel; Raj Jain; Katsutoshi Tsukamoto, Editor(s)