Recent status of the polymer optical fiber (POF) for high speed data communication and telecommunication is reviewed. The GI POF was proposed for the first time 20 years ago at Keio University, and several methodologies to fabricate GI POF have been currently proposed worldwide. In this paper, we both theoretically and experimentally verify that the most transparent GI POF can be obtained by the polymer-dopant system. The relation between the refractive index profile and the dispersion characteristics of the GI POF was quantitatively clarified. The refractive index profile of the GI POF obtained by the interfacial-gel polymerization process was controlled to enable to transmit the order of gigabit per second bit rate. Furthermore, the accurate approximation of the refractive index profile and consideration of mode dependent attenuation enabled to precisely predict the dispersion characteristics of the GI POF.

Recent status of the polymer optical fiber (POF) for high speed data communication and telecommunication is reviewed. The GI POF was proposed for the first time 20 years ago at Keio University, and several methodologies to fabricate GI POF have been currently proposed worldwide. In this paper, we both theoretically and experimentally verify that the most transparent GI POF can be obtained by the polymer-dopant system. The relation between the refractive index profile and the dispersion characteristics of the GI POF was quantitatively clarified. The refractive index profile of the GI POF obtained by the interfacial-gel polymerization process was controlled to enable to transmit the order of gigabit per second bit rate. Furthermore, the accurate approximation of the refractive index profile and consideration of mode dependent attenuation enabled to precisely predict the dispersion characteristics of the GI POF.

The status of the plastic optical fiber (POF) for high-speed data communication is described. Very recently, the low-loss and high-bandwidth perfluorinated GI POF which has no serious absorption loss from visible to 1.3-µm wavelength was successfully prepared at Keio University. Since the core diameter (300-1000 µm) of the GI POF is much larger than that of the multimode silica fiber (62.5 µm), the serious modal noise in the conventional multimode silica fiber was virtually eliminated, resulting in stable giga bit order data transmission with inexpensive couplers and connectors.

This paper introduces a formation method for 3-dimensional 6 ch.×6 ch. shuffling structures with graded-index (GI) circular core in a multimode polymer optical waveguide for optical printed circuit boards (OPCBs) using a unique photomask-free fabrication technique named the Mosquito method. The interchannel pitch of the fabricated waveguides is 250µm, where all the channels consist of both horizontal and vertical bending structures and the last 6 channels in parallel cross over the first 6 channels. We also report 3-dimensional S-shaped polymer waveguides. In the S-shaped waveguides, the first and last 6 channels with both horizontal and vertical core bending composing the above 3-dimensional shuffling waveguide are separated, in order to evaluate the effect of over-crossing on the loss. It is experimentally confirmed that there is no excess insertion loss due to the shuffling structure in the 3-D shuffling waveguide. The evaluated crosstalk of the 3-D shuffling waveguide is lower than -30dB. The 3-D shuffling waveguide proposed in this paper will be a promising component to achieve high bandwidth density wiring for on-board optical interconnects.