Demonstration of an In-Flight Entertainment System Using Power-over-Fiber

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript provides a solution of using optical fiber to replace part of the cables and copper wires for in-flight entertainment system. Its feasibility is questionable.

1.     The efficiency of the energy conversion from electric to optic (HPOS) and then back to electric (ETU) seems too low, the roughly calculated power conversion efficiency of the electric-optic-electric process is less than 8%. And it may need to power hundreds of video monitors in the practical application, which means too much energy would be wasted. Does it make sense to save those weight at the cost of wasting so much energy? The necessity of this system needs to be more fully stated.

2.     About the efficiency of ETU-1 and ETU-2, the manuscript describes: “This was the case of ETU-1 where losses due to the connector, splices, and splitters were 4.13dB. On the other hand, the ETU-2 losses (intrinsic) with only one splitter were less than 0.5dB.” In general, the loss of the connector, splices, and splitters are normally small (less than 0.5dB), it is unreasonable to attribute the extra loss of ETU-1 (compared with ETU-2) to those devices.

3.     The description of Fig.6(a) and (c) are reversed, the format of the manuscript needs to be carefully revised.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Nice manuscript and research work.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The study subject for this article has no scientific impact on communications nor shows a measurable impact on aircraft applications.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors stated that this work presents just a proof-of-concept and has no analysis for the power budget of a real application. However, we remain skeptical about the feasibility and significance of this issue. The energy conversion process of electric-optic-electric is against to the common sense of energy utilization. It may be employed in some special occasions where the conventional electricity power transmission is unusable, rather than being applied to an in-flight entertainment system. The entertainment system of the aircraft is not this kind of special occasion. We insist on questioning the significance of this work.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

No further comments for the authors