On November 29, the 2013 Optical Fiber Communication Development Report was held in Panyu, Guangzhou, China, and the conference was "‘ Broadband China." Strategic Optical Networking Opportunities ". Jian Shuisheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published a report and mentioned that the current network can save more than 99% of energy by changing to optical switching, and it is urgent to study optical switching, hoping that T-class capacity switches will be realized first in China.

According to reports, during the meeting, Academician Jane said he was not optimistic about plastic optical fiber. He said that the price of foreign quartz fiber has dropped to about 40 yuan, while the domestic plastic fiber is still 600 to 700 yuan; In addition, plastic fiber resistance to high temperature is not strong, large loss. (The loss of plastic fiber is 0.5db/km, while the loss of quartz fiber is only 0.18db/km)

In this regard, some netizens expressed different views. leonardoyou said that for PON network applications of 10 km or less, the loss of 0.5db is the allowable range. Quartz fiber loss has reached the theoretical limit, and plastic fiber still has a lot of room for improvement.

Shenzhen Huaying Century Photoelectric Technology Co., Ltd. also said on Weibo, "FTTH is only one of the application markets of plastic fiber, and it is not necessarily the advantage market of plastic fiber; In some special harsh application environments, compared with other transmission media, plastic fiber has its irreplaceable material advantages. Moreover, there is no need to always take out quartz fiber and plastic fiber, the two do not conflict, the distinct material characteristics determine the complementary relationship between the two, long distance and short distance, complement each other, just as the human body in the arteries and veins and capillaries."

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Application of plastic optical fiber in communication network

　　Plastic fiber is one of the information industry materials with theoretical research significance and application prospect in the field of polymer science in the past 20 years. Plastic fiber has been widely concerned in the world for its advantages of large core diameter, easy docking, good flexibility, strong plasticity, light weight and low price. Plastic fiber in short-distance communication and optical fiber sensing has the advantages that quartz fiber does not have, so it occupies obvious advantages, has become the ideal transmission medium to achieve short-distance communication network, in the future home intelligence, office automation, industrial control network, vehicle airborne communication network and military communication network data transmission has an important position.