Abstract

The vapor-phase axial deposition (VAD) technique has made dramatic progress over a few years and achieved satisfactory productivity as well as excellent performance in spite of its short development history compared with the MCVD and OVPO processes. Large amounts of VAD fiber have been manufactured by production plants with a capacity of more than several thousand kilometer fiber per month. This plant operation provided enough data to indicate successful performance and productivity of the VAD process with all kinds of fiber including conventional graded-index, high N.A. with large core, and single-mode fibers. For example, VAD graded-index fibers were successfully used in commercial tests of interoffice trunk with medium capacity by NTT in Japan. VAD single-mode fibers have been used in field trials to assure the performance required for high-capacity intercity and submarine cable systems.

© 1983 Optical Society of America