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 The ETSI TS 105 175-1 Standard for Access, Terminals, Transmission and Multiplexing (ATTM); Plastic Optical Fibre System Specifications for 100 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s has now been accepted.
The present document specifies the POF cabling system 100 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s for interoperability among different suppliers. The system comprises the active optical elements, the cables, connectors and wall plugs. A future step could be to achieve integration of POF interfaces into end user equipment.
The full standard is available here for download and review. A short excerpt from the introduction is below:
Polymer Optical Fibres (POF) based on Poly-Methyl-Metha-Acrilate (PMMA) with step-index 1mm core diameter (referred to in the rest of the present document as POF) have gained interest in the recent years for their interesting properties compared to the better known glass optical fibres (GOF). The main advantages of POF when compared to GOF are:
- POF large core diameter (1mm) allows do-it-yourself installation and termination with common cutter and electrician-like low cost tools; besides PMMA material is a very inexpensive material.
- POF high diameter and numerical aperture makes bending loss sensitivity much lower than silica fibre (GOF).
- POF mechanical resilience and elasticity makes it possible to step on it and even tie it. Dust and water harm POF to a much smaller extent than GO
- The optical sources for POF are in the visible range, and the optical launch is usually non-collimated.
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