Light in-flight entertainment
Plastic Optical Fibres are light weight and very flexible. Moreover, POF demonstrate high transmission capacity and low noise resistance. These characteristics, together with the ease of installation, have made POF very attractive solutions in both industrial environments and consumer applications. Through their use, the MOTIFES project, targeting multimedia data transfer around a commercial passenger aircraft, has brought new ideas and devices for in-flight entertainment. Specifically, two architectures for an IFE system have been proposed with the use of Plastic Optical Fibre and IEEE 1394 technologies as support for the distribution network. Both these architectures serve several airplane configurations, such as single aisle or twin aisle, and can lead to a new full digital IFE system with enhanced entertainment functions. The use of optical fibres, and in particular POF, ensures high bandwidth and solves the major problems of Electromagnetic Interference and installation. Its light weight construction means lower power consumption, rendering the system environmentally friendly. Being a fully digital system, it allows the integration of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies and products. This allows the IFE system to be combined with a video surveillance system based on COTS. The development of a new IFE system standard based on POF gives better network throughput available at the seat, and at the same time provides extended development opportunities to POF and IFE industries.
