Practical aspects of access network indoor extensions using multimode glass and plastic optical fibers

Following the successful installation of optical fibers in the access network, the next current step is to extend the optical fiber network into buildings to satisfy the ever-growing demand for broadband services. Low-cost easily installable multimode glass and plastic optical fibers are attractive media for high-capacity indoor telecom networks. Many existing buildings already have glass multimode fibers installed for local area network applications. New developments of plastic optical fibers with low losses in the 850–1300-nm range have spawned a great interest in using these fibers for indoor applications together with glass multimode fibers. Several issues arise in these interconnections, such as large variations in connector losses among randomly selected fiber segments, asymmetric link losses in bidirectional links, and variations in bandwidths among different types of fibers. In this paper we examined real-world link losses when randomly interconnecting multimode glass and plastic fiber segments having factory-installed connectors.