Green Technology Solution for Small-World Communication Using Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) and Light Emitting Diode (LED)—Design and Application
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study discusses a green technology solution focusing on plastic optical fiber (POF) in terms of the fabrication, devices, configuration and application. The POF-WDM technology is reported to be sustainable solution to provide high bandwidth services for the small world communication. And Green POF can improve the network performance in short distance communication system. There are several structural problems that greatly weaken the current study.
1. The introduction is not concentrated enough, the authors intended to show the promising side of the POF by listing too much trivial features which is not so closely related to the topic of “green technology”. Second, of the six keywords, the last three seems not specific to this paper. Rather, optical splitter is more important and representative. Third, the term WDM seems important technology, but what is WDM-POF and WDM network? There is no description about that. I suggest the author to be more concentrated by cutting unrelated description about POF and introducing more about the relation between POF and green technology.
2. The statement in the abstract is counterintuitive. Why is plastic optical fiber greener compared to silica fiber optic? Though, POF is cheaper than silica fiber as the authors said, isn’t plastic is more polluted to the environment than silica fiber?
3. Viewpoints lacks support in the Introduction. For example, the author said, “With data rates of up to few Gigabits and assured quality of service to every device in the residence, POF is the most robust technology for 100 Mbps Optical Ethernet and video transmission in the home.” Please justify these points by giving practical or literature supports.
4. Since there is no literature review in this paper, the authors need to illustrate the contribution and novelty in the introduction.
5. The structures of Section 3 and section 5 are unreasonable. Both are with only one subsection, why not just name the section with the title of the subsection?
6. The conclusion is too weak. It should be more detailed to summarize the important finding or implications of this study. Namely, what will this new green solution brings to users and the industry? How sustainable is the solution compared to traditional technology?
7. English writing needs improvements. There are a lot of grammar mistakes and puzzling expressions. For example, on page 19, in the discussion, “we are successfully developed…”.
Author Response
The comments have been addressed completely as seen in the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The topic of this paper is attractive to the readers, within the scope of the Journal; however, prior to its publication changes must be made.
1) In the abstract, please bring in your 2-3 special quantitative achievements from the results of this study.
2) The novelty of the work must be clearly addressed and discussed, compare your research with existing research findings, and highlight novelty, (compare your work with existing research findings and highlight novelty).
3) The main objective of the work must be written on the more clear and more concise way at the end of the introduction section,
4) Introduction section must be written on more quality way, i.e. more up-to-date references addressed. Research gap should be delivered on more clear way with the directed necessity for the conducted research work. Following papers are also recommended
DOI: 10.1177/0958305X211044998
DOI: 10.1080/15435075.2021.1881902
DOI: 10.3390/su11030808
DOI: 10.1002/er.8219
DOI : 10.3389/fenvs.2022.889453
5) Conclusion section is missing some perspective related to the future research work, quantify main research findings.
6) The quality of figures should be improved
7) English language should be carefully checked and carefully check paper for language typos.
Author Response
The comments have been addressed completely as seen in the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors proposed to use a plastic optical fibre (POF) as a short communication tool by using Low-cost Fused Taper technique. A bundle of POL is twisted and fused together to make a beam splitter and demultiplexer. The work is quite interesting and can be useful for those in the short communication area as the authors have included the possible applications in the manuscript. However, some issues have to be clarified as follows before being accepted;
1. In order to fuse the plastic fibre, the temperature has to be controlled not to be too high to avoid damage. The authors use the candle as a heat source. How the temperature can be controlled steadily? If the heat is not consistent, will the tapering structure and fusion be affected including the loss?
2. How will the number of POF in a bundle affect the fabrication process and the output signal? The authors mentioned the ‘N’ number but there is no relation with the output signal e.g. losses. If ‘N’ is higher, then the fabrication process including the tapering length and the output diameter will be affected. What is the limit of ‘N’?
3. How the POFs are twisted? Was it mechanically controlled to get a uniform twist structure? Will this twisting part affect the coupling efficiency and output signal?
4. Figure 12 showing the prototype is not clear. Please show the prototype picture with detail labelled on it. The authors have 2 types of prototypes and it’s better to make is comparable in the picture.
5. The authors have used Figures from other references e.g. Figure 20 (with citation). Was it approved to be used in this article? And maybe for Figure 24 (without citation), I’m not sure if it’s the original picture but the picture itself is not clear. What are the FlexRay, Ethernet and MOST in the picture?
For the original article like this one, it should have only the original drawing as it is very confusing if you have both pictures from yourselves and from someone else. It is confusing which one is your original work and which one has already been done by the others. It also leads to misunderstanding that all the works have been done originally by the authors.
6. Please check the language again as there are some mistakes i.e. in page 4
“…which means the method need to be further.” Some texts are missing here.
The references are not cited properly i.e. Ref [3], there is no title. Also, there are only 14 references, but half of them are self-citation (6/14). Aren’t there any more works relevant to this? Further literature reviews are definitely required.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
The comments have been addressed completely as per attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments for authors are in the attached PDF document.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
The comments have been addressed completely as per attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The current version of manuscript has been revised according to the reviewer's comments such that it is more related to the topic of green technology. However, there are several minor problems with the current manuscript.
First, the references are not enough, especially for the introduction section. Second, the authors still need to go through to the whole paper to eliminate errors in format. For example, the article title is missing in Reference 12.
Author Response
All comments have been addressed successfully
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
1. Introduction section must be written in a more quality way, i.e. more up-to-date references
addressed. Research gap should be delivered in more clear way with the directed necessity for the
conducted research work
2. The authors didn't cite the latest publication.
Author Response
The comments have been addressed completely
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors haven't clarified the points clearly, i.e.
1. the authors wrote in the manuscript that "In order to fuse the plastic fibre, the temperature has to be controlled not to be too high to avoid damage." in which I asked how the author control the temperature. The answer from the authors is "The normal temperature cannot be controlled". Therefore, it's not clear at all. At least the authors should provide the number of which temperature is appropriate for this work.
2. The authors still haven't mentioned how the number of N affects the output signal.
3. How will the twisting affect the coupling efficiency? How the twisting can be controlled to obtain desired coupling efficiency?
4. Have the authors received permission to use Figure 20 in this original article?
5. The references are very few compared to the work. The authors haven't done any further literature review as requested. Otherwise, the novelty of this work should be mentioned more clearly, if there are no other relevant works to be cited.
Author Response
All comments have been addressed and justified. Thank you for the beneficial input.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
I think that the objective of the paper is to describe the performance of a novel splitter design and its applications and it should be made clear in the paper title.
At the Introduction, the transition between the general description of POF-based networks and the need of splitters such as those designed by the authors is too abrupt: “Since POF has more demand and is a new trend for visible optical communication, there have been many technologies for designing and manufacturing POF-based optical splitters….” . POF networks require splitters but also other elements that are not mentioned. Are these splitters indispensable? Why? Is it because the network is based on WDM transmission?
The organization of the manuscript has not been described in the introduction.
Many figures and captions have still low quality, and do not help to understand the text: Fig. 9 x-label is not legible and the legend is incomplete; in Fig.15 the Table column names are wrong; The labels in the right pictures of Fig. 19 are hardly readable. The text in Fig. 26 is not clear. As a general comment, different figures have labels with different letter fonts.
I think that the conclusions explain the true aim of the paper much better than the introduction.
Author Response
All comments have been addressed successfully. Thank you sir.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 3
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have addressed all the issues.
Reviewer 4 Report
I think that the change in the title has made clearer the objective of the paper. Also helps that now the organization of the manuscript is described at the end of the introduction.
