Development of Power Over Fiber for Medical Devices Application

Copper wires are commonly used to transmit electrical power with several disadvantages in terms of vulnerability and maintenance cost. This project aims to demonstrate the transmission of power using optical fiber cables to power up a medical device. The objective of this project is to supply enough power to power up an Arduino microprocessor that will be connected to several sensors. A high-power laser was used as the input source, optical fiber as a medium to transmit power and a photodiode converter to convert the light energy back to electricity. Simulation work was also carried out using Optisystem to realize a much longer transmission range of up to 100 km. In the experimental work, the high-power laser was able to supply 5 V to enable an Arduino uno to operate successfully. For the simulation, it was possible to obtain 0.147 V output electrical voltage. Both the experimental and simulation works show good agreement and promise a great potential of power over fiber for future development and application.