International and industrial standardization of optical circuit board technologies

Abstract Although the prospects for commercial proliferation of optical circuit board (OPCB) technology at the turn of the century were crippled by the rapid slow-down in the telecoms sector following the stock market crash in 2001, embedded waveguide-based OPCB technology continued to advance steadily, albeit at a slower pace than anticipated at the turn of the century. By 2016 substantial improvements in the three crucial areas of optical waveguide material, waveguide fabrication, and connectorization had finally allowed polymer waveguide cable products to emerge with comparable loss and dispersion in the operational wavelength range around 850 nm to optical fiber.