Electronics Consortium Backs New Miniature Plastic Fiber Interface

3 June, 1999


An electronics consortium consisting of Hitachi Cable Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic), Sony Corporation, Toshiba Corporation, and connector makers Molex Incorporated, SMK Electronics Corporation and Taiko Denki Co. today announced plans to support a new miniature plastic optical fiber (POF) interface.

The common specifications will cover the connector, transceiver and cabling, and the group is already promoting the concept to various POF-related companies.

Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) is suitable for high-speed data transmission and offers advantages of flexibility, high bandwidth and low cost. POF has been adopted in certain high-speed digital interfaces such as ATM and IEEE 1394.

In those interfaces, however, comparatively larger PN-type POF connectors are used, which has driven the need for a smaller standard. The interface proposed by the consortium includes optical fiber connectors about half the size of the current.

PN-type. The smaller overall interface size will help meet the miniaturization needs of future digital home applications, and enable more devices to be connected to one unit.

The new POF interface is targetted for future high speed requirements such as IEEE 1394, which are expected to enable data transmission rates up to 1Gbps.

Features of the new POF interface design include no EMI, high-speed data transfer capabilities, and easy handling to meet next generation high speed needs.

The consortium plans to introduce the new POF interface to industry standard organizations inside and outside of Japan in order to establish it as a future global standard.


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