Comparative analysis of plastic optical fiber and glass optical fiber for home networks

This paper presents a comparative analysis between plastic and glass multimode fiber in order to determine the most convenient and adequate to deploy Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) technology. FTTH is a promising technology capable of meeting the on-going increase of bandwidth request. The main objective of this comparison analysis is to determine the advantages and disadvantages of plastic to glass fiber and be able to advise confidently on the most reliable, efficient and cost effective for FTTH. The work consists of high simulation covered with Optiwave OptiSystem 7 software. A passive Optical Network for FTTH has been designed and simulated. The performance parameters studied are: bandwidth, bit rate and attenuation. Results showed that the Q factor for the network using plastic fiber is higher than the one of glass fiber. This makes the plastic fiber better than the glass fiber in terms of transmission losses or attenuation. Furthermore, analysis carried on with a BER analyzer and eye diagram showed that the signal is more distorted and more affected by noise in the case of the glass fiber. The same result is also proved by the use of optical signal to noise ratio which gives higher result in the case of the plastic fiber than the glass one. In total, plastic fiber is more efficient and reliable for FTTH.