Ribbon Fiber Optic Bus for Aerospace Applications

This proposal presents an approach to reducing mass and volume of aerospace subsystems by using optical fibers and low cost off-the shelf optical components. This leads to reduced launching cost, particular as it applies to microsatellites.Added benefits of fiber optics, in addition to cost and weight reduction are greatly improved performance because of their inherent immunity to ElectroMagnetic Interference (EMI) and ElectroMagnetic Pulses (EMP), radiation tolerance, and a data ratecapability several orders of magnitude above that of electric wires.Finally, optical fibers combined with Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) lend themselves to efficient configuring of a bidirectional fiberoptic bus that eliminates costly electronic or electro-optic switches by incorporating all-passive glass nodes fordata transmission and health status monitoring. In addition to the military Avionics market, fiberoptic buses as presented in this proposal have wide application in the commercial telecommunication market, specifically, Fiber To The Business (FTTB) and Fiber To The Home (FTTH).