Fiber optic

Overview

Fiber optic lines are thin, transparent, often flexible fiber meant to act as a waveguide to guide light streams from one end of the fiber to another. These materials are largely used as a communication method. Due to their light-based data transfer, good quality fibers experience less loss than electrically conductive cables, and cannot experience electromagnetic interference. Fibers can also be sued to illumination.

Technical Details

Fiber optic cables consist of a optical-quality core surrounded by a reflective cladding and often a plastic buffer coating that helps prevent damage from physical and chemical attack. Sometimes these cables are bundled together and surrounded by one sheath (also called a "jacket").

Fiber optic cables come in two varieties.

• Single-mode Fibers - small diameter (about 9 microns), and transmit via infrared laser light
• Multi-mode Fibers - larger fibers that transmit infrared light from LEDs.

Some cables also transmit using visible light and plastic cores, and likewise tend to have slower transfer rated, more interference, and rather large cores.

Fiber optic cables work by transmitting light through a transparent medium (the core). A reflective cladding surrounding the core prevents light from escaping and reflects in back into the core for the length of its journey.

Fiber optic data systems are typically composed of either 3 or 4 parts.

• Transmitter - encodes data and emits light signals
• Optical fiber - conducts the light signal over a distance
• Optical receiver - receives and decodes light signals
• Optical regenerator (optional) - light strength can degrade in low quality fiber and long distances. Optical regenerators are placed midway to accept and retransmit a signal at a higher strength.

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