Fiber_Optics

Fiber Optics The Technology of Fiber Optics A fiber optic is a cable that is quickly replacing out-dated copper wires. Fiber optics are based on a concept known as total internal reflection. It can transmit video, sound, or data in either analog or digital form. Compared to copper wires it can transmit thousands of times more data and has many general uses ranging from telecommunications, computing, and medicine. In the summer of 1970, scientists at the Corning Glass Works developed a single mode fiber with a loss of 20 dB/km. This corresponds to over a 99% loss over one km, which may seem useless, but at the time it was a spectacular breakthrough. On October 30, 1986, a fiber across the English Channel became operational. In December 1988, the TAT-8, the first transatlantic fiber cable became fully functional. Currently, the standard losses of fiber are within 0.5 – 0.25 dB/km with a data transfer rate of one trillion bits per second. The basic setup for a fiber optical system is that first, a transmitter receives an electrical signal, usually from a copper wire. The transmitter drives a current on a light source and the light source launches the optical signal into the fiber. fiber, cable, copper, cables, light, optics, optical, companies, attenuation, one, two, signal, needs, loss, wires, source, power, over, need, much, intrinsic, electrical, core, bandwidth, another, types, type, together, singlemode, outside, optic, multimode, miles, high, db/km