Use of optical fiber in automotive engineering:
Fiber optic technology is steadily becoming the medium of choice for a wide variety of applications in the automobile industry. Because of its unique characteristics, fiber optics are a naturally ideal choice for communications, lighting, and requirements of sense.
Many automobile manufacturing companies are using optical fibers for the application of lightning for several reasons. First and foremost, the fiber transmits ‘cold’ light, making it a safer alternative to traditional sealed beam or halogen lighting. Along with the safety advantages that the use of optical fiber consists of, the light source is easily accessible and it offers much more in providing creativity while designing the car model. Optics manufacturer manufactures optics through laser line beam splitter manufacturing process which requires optical polarizer optics.
The use of plastic optical fibers in automotive networking systems was started in 1998 when Mercedes Benz successfully introduced the use of optical fibers in the manufacturing of automobiles.
The use of electronic devices in a car is drastically increasing every year, which is the result of an increase in the equipment used for entertainment by passengers – from simple radios used in the 1907s to the used of TVs, DVD players, and even GVP consoles. To realize ubiquitous access to multiple digital equipment sites in a car, each equipment site or node must be connected, thereby rapidly increasing the number of communication cables within the vehicle.
It’s requirements
The requirement of this type of ubiquitous connection is a big problem in the design of networking systems for automotive fiber in terms of both space load and physical load. Most of the plastic optic fibers which are used today typically have a diameter of 980 micrometers made up of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and the diameter of cladding is approximately 1000 micrometers made up of fluorinated polymer. The whole optical fiber is covered with a coating of polyamide material (PA) which enhances the robustness of optical fiber in-vehicle use.
Properties of plastic optical fibers like easy connection ability, high numerical aperture (typically 0.50 to 0.58), flexibility, and mechanical strength have increased the use in automotive infotainment networking systems in many passenger and commercial cars from the late 1990s.
An optical fiber that is used in automobiles typically uses around 660 nm light-emitting-diode (LED) sources and photodiode receivers.