Fiber Optic

Fiber optic cable innovation

Fiber optic cable innovation

Introduction

In fiber optic communication the data is transferred from one place to another by sending pulses of light through the optic fiber cable. The cable of fiber optic is a thin glass tube. The glass is 100% pure and as thin as human hair. The light pulses form an electromagnetic carrier wave which is used to transmit information through modulation. The amount of data carried by a fiber optic is far greater than a conventional copper wire or a coaxial cable. One of the greatest advantages of fiber optic is that it is unaffected by external interference from other electromagnetic waves. It provides reliable data communication and high data transfer over long distances. Fiber optic has multiple data types and is used effectively by the telecommunications industry. The future use of fiber optic for data communication is expected to be even higher.

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History of Fiber Optics

The founding stones of fiber optic were placed as early when Marconi discovered that signals can transmit through space. The invention of telephone by Bell was also a founding stone for communication links such as fiber optics. The actual grounds of fiber optics are dependent upon three inventions. An amplifier of light signal, invention of light source of low wave lengths and the transmission of light through a medium. It was the latter half of the 20th century which contributed to the evolution of fiber optic technology.

How a Fiber Optic Works

Fiber optic communication uses Time division Multiplexing (TDM). In TDM multiple users data is broken into packets and dispersed over the communication link in one go. A similar technique is employed by coaxial cables as well but fiber optic communication has a base frequency 108 times greater than conventional techniques. This makes the bandwidth unlimited for a fiber optic channel. The speed of data transmission for fiber optics is 40 gigabytes per second.

Communication System of a Fiber Optic

The fiber optic similar to any conventional system has three components; a receiver, a transmitter and an information channel connecting the receiver and the transmitter.

The Transmitter

The transmitter receives the channel from the external source such as a computer or a PSTN telephone, converts the data into light signals which can be travelled over the fiber glass tube. The transmitter is also called a light source because it generates light signals to be transmitted over the information channel. A semi conductor diode laser is used to create the light source and different lasers are used to represent each color or channel. The types of lasers manaftured for fiber optic transmission are other single laser or tunable lasers. Tunable lasers also transmit single color at a time but can be re tuned to transmit other colors. The light intensity and brightness are closely monitored to avoid noise over the communication link.

Wavelength lockers are incorporated in the transmitter to control the brightness, frequency and intensity of laser to maintain a high signal to noise ...