Researchers at the University of Southampton's Zepler Institute have manufactured a 11km length of hollow core photonic bandgap fibre. According to the team, this type of fibre has only been made in lengths of hundreds of metres previously.
Hollow core photonic bandgap fibre supports bandwidths in excess of 200nm, with a longitudinally uniform loss of approximately 5dB/km at 1560nm. The fibre made at Southampton has a 19 cell core and a five cladding ring structure and was fabricated using a conventional two-stage stack and draw technique.
"Hollow core photonic bandgap fibre has only had niche applications up until now because it was thought that it could not be manufactured in lengths suitable for telecoms applications," said Dr Marco Petrovich a senior member of the team. "Not only have we successfully made a photonic bandgap fibre in a suitable length, we have also engineered it to have the right properties for telecoms applications."
The team says it demonstrated data transmission at 10Gbit/s along the 11km span using direct detection. The results were said to show only 'minor penalties'.
Manufacturing long lengths of photonic band gap fibre is said to be difficult because the nodes and struts that give photonic bandgap fibre its properties are usually on a sub micron scale, with many of nanometre scale.
Dr Petrovich noted: "Our numerical models of the fibre drawing process give us confidence that much longer fibre yields are feasible through further scaling of the process and that much lower loss fibres should be possible."
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Author
Graham Pitcher
Source: www.newelectronics.co.uk