Optical Data Transmission with Plastic Scintillating Fibers

摘要

In data transmission systems there are applications where lateral coupling light is requested. Fluorescent optical fibers radiate light as a response to incident illumination along the side. Because of photosensitivity along the side, the plastic photo-luminescent fiber is considered a flexible coupling alternative of the light, instead of discrete position coupler or tap. Fluorescent optical fibers have been investigated for data transmission applications. With commercially available fluorescent fiber for the optical bus system and smartphone based data transmission (ASK modulation) the data rates up to 500Mbit/s are feasible, by selecting the right parameters such as short fluorescence lifetime, spectral region of the fibers correlated with light sources and photodetectors and in-fiber low spectral attenuation. The application is useful in automotive applications for data transmission and distributed sensing.