Our current ?age of technology? is the result of many brilliant inventions and discoveries, but it is our ability to transmit information, and the media we use to do it, that is perhaps most responsible for its evolution. Progressing from the copper wire of a century ago to today?s fiber optic cable, our increasing ability to transmit more information, more quickly and over longer distances has expanded the boundaries of our technological development in all areas. An optical fiber (or fiber) is a glass or plastic fiber that carries light along its length. Fiber optics is the overlap of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of optical fibers. Optical fibers are widely used in fiber optic communications, which permits transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data rates) because light has high frequency than any other form of radio signal than other forms of communications. Light is kept in the core of the optical fiber by total internal reflection.. This causes the fiber to act as a waveguide. Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel along them with less loss, and they are also immune to electromagnetic interference, which is caused by thunderstorm. Fibers are also used for illumination, and are wrapped in bundles so they can be used to carry images, thus allowing
An optical fiber is a glass or plastic fiber designed to guide light along its length by total internal reflection. Fiber optics is the branch of applied science and engineering concerned with such optical fibers. Optical fibers are widely used in fiber-optic communication, which permits digital data transmission over longer distances and at higher data rates than electronic communication. They are also used to form sensors, and in a variety of other applications.
The operating principle of optical fibers applies to a number of variants including single-mode optical fibers, graded-index optical fiber, and step-index optical fibers. Because of the physics of the optical fiber, special methods of splicing fibers and of connecting them to other equipment are needed. A variety of methods are used to manufacture optical fibers, and the fibers are also built into different kinds of cables depending on how they will be used.
History
The light-guiding principle behind optical fibers was first demonstrated in Victorian times, but modern optical fibers were only developed beginning in the 1950's. Optical fiber was developed in 1970 by Corning Glass Works with attenuation low enough for communication purposes (about 20dB/km), and at the same time GaAs semiconductor lasers were developed that were compact and therefore suitable for fiber-optic communication systems.
After a period of intensive research from 1975 to 1980, the first commercial fiber-optic communication system was developed, which operated at a wavelength around 0.8 ?m and used GaAs semiconductor lasers. This ?first generation? system operated at a bit rate of 45 Mb/s with repeater spacing of up to 10km.
The ?second generation? of fiber-optic communication was developed for commercial use in the early 1980?s, operated at 1.3 ?m, and used InGaAsP semiconductor lasers.
Third-generation fiber-optic systems operated at 1.55 ?m and had loss of about 0.2-dB/km. They achieved this despite earlier difficulties with pulse-spreading at that wavelength using conventional InGaAsP semiconductor lasers.
The fourth generation of fiber-optic communication systems used optical amplification to reduce the need for repeaters and wavelength-division multiplexing to increase fiber capacity.
The focus of development for the fifth generation of fiber-optic communications is on extending the wavelength range over which a WDM system can operate.
In the late 1990s through 2000, the fiber optic communication industry became associated with the dot-com bubble. Industry promoters and research companies such as KMI and RHK predicted vast increases in demand for communications bandwidth due to increased use of the Internet.
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