Finally, Fiber Optics In The 787

The use in fiber optics in avionics is now a decade or more old but the use of the technology is still limited and in its infancy. Several European projects, the Boeing 777, and a few military applications have led the field so far. The 777 used fiber for a communication link back in the 1990s. The fiber optic cable chosen, however, had production issues and all the technology had to be removed. Maybe there is a chance to get fiber optics back in the 777 as the ups and downs of fiber optics is not alone to aerospace. A lot of companies still sell 100base media converters for Fiber To the Desk applications that were designed in back in the late 90s also. Their use and benefits rise and fall with the price of copper.

But things have matured. Conferences such as the Avionics In Fiber Optics, AVFOP IEEE event are now several years old. Mark Beranek of Navair does a great job creating an engaging list of topics and the list of attendees and exhibitors has continued to grow over several years. Other conferences such as SPIE or Autotestcon now also include fiber optic presentations. and while conferences are nice, the use of fiber optics is what matters. Fighter Jets such as the F-18, F16, and F-22 are all using fiber as are cargo planes such as the C-130 and A400. There are now dozens of platforms and dozens of years of use.

The big applications though so far have been In-Flight Entertainment. Lumexis, Panasonic, and Thales use fiber to reduce the weight of their aftermarket upgrades. Hundreds of fibers offer hundreds of pounds of weight savings as well as limitless bandwidth. With all this rich history now run throughout airframes, it is time for a major platform to use fiber for more than sending jaggy videos or music to headphone jacks that are often partially broken.

Enter the 787.

We’ve been waiting nearly three years and unfortunately have to wait another six months or so to see the first one fly off to Japanese premier carrier ANA. Boeing presented an overview of the maintenance advances in the 787 recently and stuck in the middle of the presentation was a once proprietary picture:

You can find the whole presentation on line including the number of links and the length of fiber deployed. 70% less weight than copper, over 1 mile of cabling, and running at speeds that are very hard to do on copper and almost impossible on copper wire in aerospace.

The last slide is a beautiful picture of the airplane flying with wings arcing back, and a lighter and more reliable airframe than has ever been made.