Size Considerations
Typical, PMMA-based plastic optical fiber has an outer diameter of 1000μm and a core diameter of 980μm, which makes it 8 times larger than glass optical fiber. FiberFin carries fiber ranging from 250μm to 3000μm, for a wide variety of applications. This larger-core diameter makes it tolerant to fiber facet damage and contaminants such as dirt.
Plastic optical fiber cable consists of a fiber which is covered in a jacket material. A 2.2mm diameter jacket made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE or PE-HD) is typical in the industry.
Due to is small size, immunity to electromagnetic interference, and compliance with international standards (EIA/TIA 569, CENELEC EN 50174-2), it is ideal for running through existing conduit to replace or upgrade network infrastructure. For many communication applications, it may be desirable to use duplex POF cable, which consists of two fibers for separate transmit and receive channels in a zip-cord jacket.
Bandwidth Considerations
In general, polymer fiber is transparent to electromagnetic waves that fall in the visible light spectrum, 400 to 700 nm. The LEDs and photodiodes used in POF transmitters and receivers most commonly operate at the red wavelength of 650 nm.
PMMA fiber core is most transparent at light with wavelengths 650-665 nm (red) and 520 nm (green). For the red wavelengths, attenuation per length is approxmately 170 dB/km, which, for practical applications means that the longest run ranges between 50 and 100 meters depending on the data transfer speed desired. For data transfer speeds of less than 1 Mbd, run lengths of up to 200 meters are possible using green light instead of red, which has the lowest optical attenuation in the fiber core.