Latest advances in optical fibers

Optical fibers can now be encountered anywhere in a telecommunication network. In that field, one of the major changes that occurred, at the turn of the Century, is the growing interest in Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) architectures, that is, optical fibers replacing copper in access networks to directly connect subscribers. This gave birth to a new category of single mode fibers referred to as bend-insensitive fibers, which has represented one of the major development focus of optical fiber manufacturers for the last 5 years. In parallel, key evolutions also took place in data communications with the decision to create, at the end of this decade, the next generation Ethernet hierarchy for equipment interfaces at rates of 40 and 100 Gb/s. This is driving recent research on fibers to be used to transport such high-rate signals between these equipments. To cite this article: L.-A. de Montmorillon et al., C. R. Physique 9 (2008).