Short range optical communication systems for vehicles and airplanes

This paper deals mainly with state of the art and next-decade technologies for fiber-optic data buses in automotive applications. Nowadays, fiber-optic data buses in automotive applications are exclusively used in the infotainment domain, MOST (Media Oriented System Transport). Current data rates are in the order of 150 MBit/s. Consequently, the use of LEDs and polymer optical fibers (POF) is sufficient. For higher data rates, also alternative solutions are discussed: The LED as transmitter can be replaced by a vertical surface emitting laser (VCSEL) and the plastic fiber (POF) by polymer-cladded silica (PCS) fiber. Due to the inherent fact that, as a result, the fiber diameter is reduced, the detector area of the well-known Silicon photo diodes can also be reduced greatly. As a consequence, data rates can be extended into the Gbit/s-region.