Coupling of Modes in Step-Index Plastic Optical Fibers by Using D-Shape Technique

Abstract

This article presents a technique for reducing the stabilization length of steady-state modes in step-index plastic optical fibers (POFs) that is important for sensor networks, Internet of Things, and signal processing and data fusion in sensor systems. The results obtained with the computational tool developed suggest that the D-shape created in the POF effectively reduces the stabilization length of the modes and, by extension, minimizes the dispersion effects of the modes by filtering out high-order modes. Applying the analysis to commercial POFs, the authors experimentally verified a reduction in the stabilization length of modes from 27 to 10 m and from 20 m to 5 m. Reducing the mode stabilization length minimizes the bit error rate (BER) in short-length SI-POF-based optical links operating at 250 Mbp/s. A reduction from 7.6 × 10−7 to 3.7 × 10−10 was achieved.