This paper investigated the different materials of optical fibers, two of them are plastic optical fibers that are namely polysulfone (PSU)/vinyl-phenyl acetate (VPAC) with refractive indices of 1.63/1.567, and the second plastic material namely sapphire (S)/polysulfone (PSU) with refractive indices of 1.77/1.63. One of the other materials consists of fluorite (FT)/polytetrafluorophenylmethacrylate (PTFPMA) with refractive indices of 1.433/1.422, where the second material consists of fluoride (FD)/poly methylmethacrylate (PMMA) with refractive indices of 1.56/1.49. Finally, the third material consists of silica (Si)/tetrafluoropropylmethacrylate (TFPMA) with refractive indices of 1.46/1.373. The simulation results are done by using optiwave simulation version 13. FT/PTFPMA fiber channel has outlined 19.23 Tb/s bit-rate with maximum Q-factor of 11.01, a minimum bit error rate of 1.05 � 10�28, gain value of 36.57 dB, and noise figure of 5.67 dB in the presence of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). It is observed that VCSEL has superior to continuous wave (CW) laser by the improvement of the performance parameters understudy at the same operating conditions. © 2019 The Authors