Do-it-Yourself optical transmission system for the home

First there was the Do-it-Yourself home improvement boom driven by a bullish real estate market, and now its the build your own optical transmission system.

Siemens and Infineon have developed a simple broadband transmission system for use in home networks.

The system uses optical polymer cables that can be laid and installed without requiring any special skills. As is the case with fiber optics, the new system uses light waves to transmit data.

Today's optical transmission technology can easily maintain a constant data transmission rate of 100 megabits per second (Mbit/s), making it suited for Internet TV, HDTVs and video-on-demand.