Noise reduction effect of graded index plastic optical fiber with microscopic heterogeneous structure

We investigated influence of core base material for graded-index plastic optical fiber (GI POF) on noise reduction effect in multimode fiber (MMF) link. In order to evaluate the noise reduction effect of GI POF, we measured noise floor spectra in MMF links with GI POFs based on perfluorinated polymer (PF polymer) and poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA) which has larger size of microscopic heterogeneous structures than PF polymer. Reflection noise in MMF link using PMMA-based GI POF was lower than that using GI POF based on PF polymer. The result indicates that stronger noise reduction effect could be obtained by using GI POF with larger scale of material heterogeneities. It is suggested that we could built the optical communication system with great robustness against reflection noise by controlling the size of heterogeneities in GI POF core.