POFAC

4

POFAC

GERMANY

Address and references

Reference address:  FH Nuernberg, Wassertorstaße 10, 90489 Nuernberg

Reference person:    Prof. Hans Poisel

Phone   +49 911 5880 1061 Fax   +49 911 5880 5061

E-mail:  hans.poisel@pofac.fh-nuernberg.de

Web Site: http://www.pofac.de

General description, expertise and role in the project

The POFAC Nuernberg was founded in 2001 as an European competence center for the application of Polymer Optical Fibers. The POFAC is an institute inside the University of Applied Sciences “Georg-Simon-Ohm” in Nürnberg.

 The main working area is data transmission over POF. Several demonstration experiments have been realised, like:

• analogue video transmission over 400 m Standard POF (2002)
• 2.5 Gbps over 15 m High-Temperature POF (2003)
• 1 Gbps receiver for Standard POF with -22 dBm sensitivity (2005)

 The POFAC is involved in the development of measurement equipment for POF and in standardization of measurement methods. The POFAC is involved in several German national Projects. POFAC is the European academic reference for POF. Last year, POFAC organized the annual POF 2004 conference in Nurberg.

 The total number of person-months dedicated to the POF-ALL project is 36.

Facilities

The POFAC has a large experimental lab, where all optical properties of optical fibers can be measured, such as:

• fiber attenuation on fixed wavelengths
• optical bandwidth in the frequency domain
• optical bandwidth in the time domain
• optical fiber bandwidth dependent on fiber length and launch NA
• index profile
• near field distribution
• far field distribution/NA
• near field/far field distribution dependent on fiber length and launch NA
• optical reflectometer signal
• max. transmission bit rate at several wavelength
• receiver sensitivity
• surface quality of POF end faces
• ageing of POF
• bending loss and coupling loss

POFAC can realize demonstration layouts for test beds, and it is currently managing a large POF demonstrator through the POF-House initiative.

Relevant publications

O. Ziemann, co-leader of POFAC with H. Poisel is one of the authors of the book: “POF - Polymer Optical Fibers for Data Communication”, published by Springer 2001/2002 in German and English. This book is the reference worldwide publication in this sector. Moreover, POFAC has published 153 papers in journals and at conferences between 2001 and 2004 (see www.pofac.de for more details). POFAC has contributed to POF-Conferences:

POF 2001: 12 papers

POF 2002: 10 papers

POF 2003: 10 papers

POF 2004: 16 papers

CV partner reference person

Hans Poisel is professor for Applied Photonics at the University of Applied Sciences in Nuernberg since 1991. The time before he was with a former big German hightech company called MBB (now EADS) active in the field of fiberoptic sensors, esp. fiberoptic gyroscopes.

He works on POF since 1993 and became a member of the International Committee for POF in 1996. In 2001 he founded the POF Application Center which he leads together with Professor Olaf Ziemann. Hans Poisel is a member of IEEE, OSA, DPG and VDE