Gamma radiation effects in fiber-optic communications

The paper deals with the gamma radiation effects on the fiber-optic communications link performances. Plastic-clad-silica (PCS) fiber (SUHNER FO 03220) of the total length of 200 m was used in the experiment. A part of the fiber (25 m) was wrapped on the plastic mandrel (Ø 2.5 cm) and put in the radiation chamber. The gamma radiation source, ⁶⁰Co, had the intensity of 5.000 Ro/h. The communication link was realized by using the data generator that formed the pulse train with different bit rates up to 10 Mb/s. The light source was IR diode (820 nm), Received data were monitored by a sampling oscilloscope (8 bit/1024 samples), at the photodetector output, and were processed on the PC 486/100 using Matlab package.