Laser Safety Overview For Optical Fiber Data Links

Current design and development activities within the computer industiy are beginning to use semiconductor laser diodes as the light source for optical fiber data links. This trend is occurring because laser diodes have many advantages over LEDs as the preferred light source for both multimode and single mode fiber. As a result, laser safety has become an important issue in the design activity of fiber data link products, both because of the need to produce safe products for the marketplace and because laser safety regulations are enforced in most countries. This paper presents an overview of some of the laser safety issues and regu-lations as they apply to optical data links.