Transmission Characteristics of Graded-Index Perfluorinated Polymer Optical Fibers

Single mode and multimode silica optical fibers have long dominated optical networking applications in telecommunications and enterprise data networking, where cost is not an overriding issue. However, as the demand for bandwidth increases in the small office, home and mobile environments, it has become increasingly desirable to develop low-cost, high-performance optical media that can be installed easily by untrained personnel. To meet this need, graded-index polymer optical fibers based on perfluorinated materials (p-GIPOF) are now being developed with performance properties that challenge those of multimode silica optical fibers in many areas.