Dispersion in laser-based polymer optical fiber links

We show that factors that have until now been given little attention can have a large impact on the data rate transmission performance of graded-index polymer optical fibers (GIPOF). Our model presents a full description of the dispersion which incorporates all the parameters involved in the determination of the total bandwidth. It is based on analytically evaluating the frequency response of the fiber instead of the direct calculation of the pulse broadening from the moments of the impulse response. We show that the baseband bandwidth is enhanced in GIPOFs mainly due to the large differential mode attenuation (DMA)