Optical Fiber Cables and Single Mode Fiber
In this post, you will get Info about the Optical Fiber Cables, How do they work? , Different types of optical fiber or Fibers, etc…
Have you ever considered how you can receive emails or other information from anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye?
This was made feasible via a network of wires that run beneath the land and beneath the sea. Optical fiber cables carry the vast majority of the world’s data. They’re also found in medical devices. Let’s have a look at this.
How do Optical fiber cables work and How they have revolutionized the world around us?
Thousands of fiber strands make up optical fiber cable. A single strand of fiber is as thin as human hair. Optical fibers use light to transmit information.
To understand how optical fibers function, let’s first learn about some basic light phenomena.
When the light goes through a medium, its speed changes. And the refractive index measures this variation in speed. Another fascinating occurrence arises as a result of this fluctuation and the speed of light. To better understand what refraction is, let us perform a fun experiment.
Prism Experiment
Light flows through a prism in this experiment. The light bends instead of traveling straight at the interface, as you can see. Refraction is the name for this occurrence. When light passes through a medium with one refractive index and then passes through another media with a different refractive index, refraction happens. When light passes from a medium with a high refractive index to one with a low refractive index, it bends towards the interface.
Fictional Experiment
The reason a pencil seems bent in a glass of water is due to refraction. In optical fibers, this simple refraction approach works well. Let’s make this a fictional experiment now. We can increase the refractive index of the glass in real-time by using dopants.
The light will bend more and more towards the surface as the refractive index rises. After a while, you’ll see that the light is passing through the glass’s surface.
If the refractive index is raised any higher, the light will abruptly return to the original medium as a pure reflection. Total internal reflection is the term for this. Total internal reflection is attainable if the incidence angle is increased rather than the refractive index. In this situation, the critical angle is a specific angle.
The light will eventually return to the first medium. The phenomenon of total internal reflection is employed to transport light in optical fiber cables. This is the most basic form of optical fiber cable. High-refractive-index cylindrical glass.
Total internal reflection occurs when the laser impacts the interface at an angle larger than the critical angle, and the light reaches the other end. This implies that light can be contained in an optical cable for a long time. Whatever complicated structure the fiber takes. Keep in mind that entire internal reflection occurs when high-refractive-index glass meets low-refractive-index air.
Optical fibers, on the other hand, require a protective coating. This arrangement precludes the application of a protective coating. The insertion of protective material will replace the air’s position and end the phenomena of total internal reflection. Placing a low refractive index glass above the core glass, known as cladding, is a simple solution to solve this problem.
Cladding
Total internal reflection will occur in this manner, and we will be able to utilize a protective layer. The basic material for both the core and the cladding is silica. Different types of dopants can be used to achieve different refractive indexes. We won’t be able to carry signals for more than 100 kilometers using the optical cable we just built. This is due to a variety of losses in the cable. Attenuation is the term used to describe the loss of signal strength.
The major causes of signal attenuation are absorption and scattering. This is why, after a certain distance, you’ll notice amplifiers and cables. They increase the signal intensity and allow for the long-distance transmission of signals. The amplifier requires power, which is derived from surrounding sources.
Now, back to the main topic,
How do the optical fibers transmit information such as phone calls or internet signals?
Zeros and ones can be used to represent any information. Let’s pretend you wish to send a hello text message from your phone. This word will first be transformed into a binary code that is a sequence of zeros and ones.
Following the conversion, these zeros and ones will be transmitted as electromagnetic waves via your cell phone. One is communicated as a high-frequency wave, while zero is conveyed as a low-frequency wave. These electromagnetic waves are picked up by your nearby mobile tower. At the top of the tower,
A light pulse is produced when an electromagnetic wave has a high frequency. A pulse is not created if this is not the case. These light pulses may now be sent via optical fiber connections with ease. To get to their destination, the information-carrying light pulses must travel via a complex network of cables. Optical fiber cables are used to cover the entire globe for this purpose.
Underwater fiber optic cable or Undersea fiber optic cable
These wires run beneath the ground and beneath the sea. These subterranean wires are mostly maintained by mobile service carriers. The submarine cable network is owned and maintained by a few worldwide players, including AT&T, Orange, and Verizon. This is a detailed cross-section shot of an undersea cable. Only a little piece of the wire is required to support the optical fiber, as you can see. The cable’s remaining area is a mechanical structure that provides protection and strength. The question now is:
Where does the amplifier get power from under these deep oceans?
Inside the cable, a thin copper shell is employed for this. This carries electric power along the cable in order to power the amplifiers. This entire debate essentially implies that if optical fiber connections do not reach a specific region of the globe, that region will be cut off from the internet and mobile communications.
Optical fiber Cable Comparision
When comparing optical fiber cable to traditional copper cable, the optical fiber cable outperforms the traditional copper cable in practically every regard. Fiber-optic lines have a far higher bandwidth than copper cables and can carry data at much faster speeds. Because the speed of light is always faster than the speed of electrons, this is the case.
Even outside of the cable, the movement of electrons in a copper cable generates a magnetic field that can induce electromagnetic interference. The light that flows through an optical cable, on the other hand, is always restricted within the fiber. As a result, there is no chance of interacting with an external signal.
Another fascinating property of optical fiber cables is that any light signal entering from the side has a slim chance of reaching the length of the wire. As a result, optical fiber cables provide a high level of data protection.
It may surprise you to learn that optical fiber was first utilized in endoscopy before being employed in telecommunications. Digital pulses are transmitted across optical fiber cables in telecommunications. Visual signals that are analog in nature are sent to the opposite end via endoscopic cables.
Thanks for reading.