Transmission Performance of Plastic Optical Fibers Designed for Avionics Platforms

Plastic optical fibers (POFs) have been proposed and implemented in the avionics environment lately, and temperature is naturally a big factor that can affect their performance in those platforms. We present an experimental characterization of the transmission properties of POFs comparing the performance of standard fibers with that of fibers designed to sustain high temperatures, such as those on avionics platforms. We tested different step-index 1-mm poly(methyl methacrylate) single-core and multicore fibers. Frequency response, bit error rate (BER), attenuation, and output power distribution were measured for each fiber type at room temperature. In addition, BER and fiber attenuation were monitored as a function of temperature, intentionally exceeding the temperature limits to obtain the true temperature ranges and to assess the performance penalty. The same properties were obtained for the overheated fibers and compared to those for nonheated fibers of the same type to reveal permanent performance degradation.