Scattering loss in plastic optical fiber

We have investigated lower limits for scattering loss in plastic optical fibers produced from PBVE. Even in the undoped polymer, frozen-in variations of density and orientation cause Rayleigh scattering, resulting in a minimum attenuation at 850 nm of -5 dB/km. Upon addition of dopant, this minimum attenuation increases to 10 dB/km. Since all of these scattering mechanisms (as well as any extrinsic scattering) introduce coupling between the various modes of a multimode plastic fiber, it is conceivable that scattering will positively impact the fiber bandwidth by reduction of modal dispersion.