Lecturer In Communications Technology at London Metropolitan Univ
SPIE Involvement:
Author
Area of Expertise:
Fibre Optics and Optoelectronics ,
Plastic Optical Fibres and Applications ,
Fibre Optic Daylighting Systems ,
Fibre Optic Data Links and Bandwidth Optimisation
Publications (1)
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Plastic Optical Fibres (POF) were developed almost 3 decades ago. They are mainly used for short haul data
communications (up to 1 km with data rates up to 1 Gbps). Over the years, POF has found applications in many other
areas including solar energy transport for illumination. In such an application, light is collected from the sun and is
directed into a space which needs to be illuminated. The use of fibres and more specifically POF, in daylighting
systems, started only a few years ago. Several approaches have been investigated and we have seen the development of
a few commercial products. The market however, has not really taken off for these technologies simply because of their
enormous price tags. It is important to note that the use of POF in these designs has been limited to the function of POF
as the transmission medium only. We propose a novel solar illumination technique using POF as both the light
collecting/concentrating mechanism and the transmission medium. By modifying the structure of the fibre, solar light
can be directed into the fibre by using an analogous process to fibre side emission but, in the reverse. We shall report on
the solar light capturing efficiency of POF as modified by several types of external imperfections introduced onto the
fibre. One major advantage of our proposed approach lies in the fact that we aim to eliminate at least one of the two
axes of sun tracking that is currently used in existing solar illumination systems.
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