Fast wavelength conversion to generate 560 nm fluorescence for data transmission in polymer optical fibres

Abstract

The use of a fluorescent fibre (15.5 mm in length) pumped in a forward direction with a 520 nm emitting LED for fast wavelength conversion to 560 nm is reported. In addition to the fact that this wavelength matches the attenuation minima of poly-methyl-methacrylate polymer optical fibres (POFs), the presented results show an external conversion efficiency of 4.7% and a bandwidth of 52.5 MHz. The device is a simple, inexpensive, compact, eye-safe and lightweight optical source at 560 nm. It can be suitable for single-channel 'long-distance' (>400 m) or WDM-based links using POFs, presenting a bandwidth-distance product of 50-100 MHz/100 m.Introduction: The C-band of silica optical fibres is centred at 1550 nm and covers the 1530-1565 nm wavelength range, presenting the minimum attenuation around 0.2 dB/km. Per-fluorinated (PF) polymer optical fibres (POFs) present minimum attenuation in an 850-1300 nm wavelength window. Suitable optical sources emitting in the near-infrared wavelengths (0.8-1.6 μm) are well developed and commercially available for silica fibres and PF POFs.Either step-index (SI) or graded-index poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA)-based POFs have four transmission windows assigned as blue, green, yellow/orange (560-600 nm) and red [1,2]. However, the minimum attenuation band in the 560-600 nm wavelength range is quite underexplored for data communication links [1][2][3][4] due to the fact that semiconductor compounds such as GaAsP, AlGaInP and GaP:N cannot be used to produce relatively efficient and/or fast modulating optical sources at those wavelength range. Thus, WDM-over-POF links generally discard the use of yellow/orange channels [1, 2, 5].

Highly Spectrally Efficient Discrete Multi-Tone Transmission over Step Index PMMA optical fibre for Short-Range Optical Communication

“…The experimental setup (Figure 4) consists of personal computer (PC) that performs DMT modulation/demodulation, an arbitrary function generator (Tektronik AFG3251), which works as a DAC, a bias-T (Mini-Circuits ZG85-12G+), a DC source, illumination LEDs (450, 520 and 650 nm) from DieMount, a fluorescent optical source (560 nm) [13], 20 m of SI-POF, a photodetector (Thorlabs PDA10A) and an oscilloscope (Rohde&Schwarz RTO 1002) to digitize the received signals. All the transmissions were adjusted to have the same mean optical power at the photodetector for all operating wavelengths so that a fair comparison can be made between all emitters.…”

“…The 560 nm channel uses a light source developed in our lab [13]. It consists of a commercial fluorescent plastic optical fibre pumped by a green LED at 520 nm.…”

Discrete Multi-Tone Transmission over Step Index PMMA optical fibre for Short-Range Optical Communication

“…DieMount, a fluorescent optical source (560 nm) [9], 20 m of SI-POF, a photodetector (Thorlabs PDA10A) and an oscilloscope (Rohde&Schwarz RTO 1002) to digitize the received signals. All the transmissions were adjusted to have the same mean optical power at the photodetector for all operating wavelengths so that a fair comparison can be made between among all emitters.…”

“…In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate high spectral efficiency transmissions using DMT in SI PMMA plastic optical fiber at 450, 520, 560 and 650 nm. The 560 nm channel uses a light source developed in our lab [9]. It consists of a commercial fluorescent plastic optical fibre pumped by a green LED at 520 nm.…”

Modelling of an Optical Access Network Platform for Radio-Frequency Transmission in the S Band / Modelação de uma Plataforma de Rede de Acesso Óptico para Transmissão de Radiofrequências na Banda S

“…Optical fiber communications are a common solution to the datalink bottleneck, especially on the last mile. Optical sources have been proposed based on fast wavelength conversion [1], where a 560-nm light source composed by a fluorescent plastic optical fiber (FPOF) is pumped by a co-propagating source at 520 nm, generated by a green light-emitting diode (LED). Afterwards, the use of a wavelength-converted optical carrier at 560 nm was experimentally assessed for 120 Mb/s with discrete multitone (DMT) data communication [2], [3], [4].…”