HOW DOES THE PHENOMENON OF TOTAL INTERNAL REFLECTION HELP IN OPTICAL FIBRES?

 INTRODUCTION-What is total internal reflection?

 MAIN 1- What are optical fibers?
 MAIN 2-How is it used in optical fibers?
 MAIN 3-Their uses, implementations, advantages, and disadvantages
 CONCLUSION
Research
Introduction
Total internal reflection is a phenomenon that occurs when light travels from a more optically dense medium (or

a medium with higher refractive index {\displaystyle {n_{1}}} ) to a less optically dense one (lower

index {\displaystyle {n_{2}}} ), such as glass to air or water to air. When light travels from an optically
dense medium to a less optically dense medium, the light refracts away from the normal. If the angle of
incidence is gradually increased, one will notice that at a certain point, the refracted ray deviates so far away
from the normal that it reflects rather than refracts. This results whenever the refracted angle predicted by
Snell's Law becomes greater than 90 degrees.
higher-index material) for which Snell's Law predicts a 90-degree angle of refraction -- this would mean the
light follows the surface rather than entering the low-index material.
One can calculate the critical angle using Snell's Law:

Total internal reflection will occur for any incident angle greater than θc.
Because the reflected ray never leaves the higher-index material, Snell's Law for total internal reflection

becomes {\displaystyle n_{1}\sin \theta _{1}=n_{1}\sin \theta _{2}} , in other words {\displaystyle \theta

_{1}=\theta _{2}} , which is the law of reflection.

There is always a fraction of the energy reflected at a boundary between materials of different refractive index,
but it is usually quite small (typically a few percent). In the case of total internal reflection, however, 100% of
the beam energy reflects (hence the name "total").
You can easily observe total internal reflection for yourself next time you are in a swimming pool. If you are
under water looking up, you see the sky. As you turn your head to look closer to horizontal, you see a reflection
of the bottom (or side) of the pool. These rays from the pool bottom hit the water-to-air boundary at an angle of
incidence greater than the critical angle, so they are reflected to you
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Optics/Total_internal_reflection
When a ray of light emerges obliquely from glass into air, the angle of refraction between ray and normal is
greater than the angle of incidence inside the glass, and at a sufficiently high obliquity the angle of refraction
can actually reach 90°. In this case the emerging ray travels along the glass surface, and the sine of the angle of
incidence inside the glass, known as the critical angle, is then equal to the reciprocal of the refractive index of
the material. At angles of incidence greater than the critical angle, the ray never emerges, and total internal
reflection occurs, for there is no measurable loss if the glass surface is perfectly clean. Dirt or dust on the
surface can cause a small loss of energy by scattering some light into the air.
Light is totally internally reflected in many types of reflecting prism and in fibre optics, in which long fibres of
high-index glass clad with a thin layer of lower index glass are assembled side-by-side in precise order. The
light admitted into one end of each fibre is transmitted along it without loss by thousands of successive internal
reflections at the interlayer between the glass and the cladding. Hence, an image projected upon one end of the
bundle will be dissected and transmitted to the other end, where it can be examined through a magnifier or
photographed. Many modern medical instruments, such as cystoscopes and bronchoscopes, depend for their
action on this principle. Single thick fibres (actually glass rods) are sometimes used to transmit light around
corners to an otherwise inaccessible location.
https://www.britannica.com/science/optics#ref37948
Two Requirements for Total Internal Reflection
Total internal reflection (TIR) is the phenomenon that involves the reflection of all the incident light off the
boundary. TIR only takes place when both of the following two conditions are met:
 the light is in the more dense medium and approaching the less dense medium.
 the angle of incidence is greater than the so-called critical angle.
Total internal reflection will not take place unless the incident light is traveling within the more optically
dense medium towards the less optically dense medium. TIR will happen for light traveling from water towards
air, but it will not happen for light traveling from air towards water. TIR would happen for light traveling from
water towards air, but it will not happen for light traveling from water (n=1.333) towards crown glass (n=1.52).
TIR occurs because the angle of refraction reaches a 90-degree angle before the angle of incidence reaches a 90-
degree angle. The only way for the angle of refraction to be greater than the angle of incidence is for light to
bend away from the normal. Since light only bends away from the normal when passing from a more dense
medium into a less dense medium, then this would be a necessary condition for total internal reflection.
Total internal reflection only occurs with large angles of incidence. Question: How large is large? Answer:
larger than the critical angle. As mentioned above, the critical angle for the water-air boundary is 48.6 degrees.
So for angles of incidence greater than 48.6-degrees, TIR occurs. But 48.6 degrees is the critical angle only for
the water-air boundary. The actual value of the critical angle is dependent upon the two materials on either side
of the boundary. For the crown glass-air boundary, the critical angle is 41.1 degrees. For the diamond-air
boundary, the critical angle is 24.4 degrees. For the diamond-water boundary, the critical angle is 33.4 degrees.
The critical angle is different for different media. In the next part of Lesson 3, we will investigate how to
determine the critical angle for any two materials. For now, let's internalize the idea that TIR can only occur if
the angle of incidence is greater than the critical angle for the particular combination of materials.

 
 
Light Piping and Optical Fibers
Total internal reflection is often demonstrated in a Physics class through a variety of demonstrations. In one
such demonstration, a beam of laser light is directed into a coiled plastic thing-a-majig. The plastic served as
a light pipe, directing the light through the coils until it finally exits out the opposite end. Once the light entered
the plastic, it was in the more dense medium. Every time the light approached the plastic-air boundary, it is
approaching at angles greater than the critical angle. The two conditions necessary for TIR are met, and all of
the incident light at the plastic-air boundary stays internal to the plastic and undergoes reflection. And with the
room lights off, every student becomes quickly aware of the ancient truth that Physics is better than drugs.
This demonstration helps to illustrate the principle by which optical fibers work. The use of a long strand of
plastic (or other material such as glass) to pipe light from one end of the medium to the other is the basis for
modern day use of optical fibers. Optical fibers are used in communication systems and micro-surgeries. Since
total internal reflection takes place within the fibers, no incident energy is ever lost due to the transmission of
light across the boundary. The intensity of the signal remains constant.
Another common Physics demonstration involves the use of a large jug filled with water and a laser beam. The
jug has a pea-sized hole drilled in its side such that when the cork is removed from the top of the jug, water
begins to stream out the jug's side. The beam of laser light is then directed into the jug from the opposite side of
the hole, through the water and into the falling stream. The laser light exits the jug through the hole but is still in
the water. As the stream of water begins to fall as a projectile along a parabolic path to the ground, the laser
light becomes trapped within the water due to total internal reflection. Being in the more dense medium (water)
and heading towards a boundary with a less dense medium (air), and being at angles of incidence greater than
the critical angle, the light never leaves the stream of water. In fact, the stream of water acts as a light pipe to
pipe the laser beam along its trajectory. Once more, students viewing the demonstration are convinced of the
fact that Physics is better than drugs.
https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/refrn/Lesson-3/Total-Internal-Reflection
Main 1
Fiber optics, also spelled fibre optics, the science of transmitting data, voice, and images by the passage of light
through thin, transparent fibers. In telecommunications, fiber optic technology has virtually
replaced copper wire in long-distance telephone lines, and it is used to link computers within local area
networks. Fiber optics is also the basis of the fiberscopes used in examining internal parts of the body
(endoscopy) or inspecting the interiors of manufactured structural products.

The basic medium of fiber optics is a hair-thin fiber that is sometimes made of plastic but most often of glass. A
typical glass optical fiber has a diameter of 125 micrometres (μm), or 0.125 mm (0.005 inch). This is actually
the diameter of the cladding, or outer reflecting layer. The core, or inner transmitting cylinder, may have a
diameter as small as 10 μm. Through a process known as total internal reflection, light rays beamed into the
fiber can propagate within the core for great distances with remarkably little attenuation, or reduction in
intensity. The degree of attenuation over distance varies according to the wavelength of the light and to
the composition of the fiber.

optical fibreLight ray passing through an optical fibre.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

When glass fibers of core/cladding design were introduced in the early
1950s, the presence of impurities restricted their employment to the short
lengths sufficient for endoscopy. In 1966, electrical engineers Charles
Kao and George Hockham, working in England, suggested using fibers
for telecommunication, and within two decades silica glass fibers were
being produced with sufficient purity that infrared light signals could
travel through them for 100 km (60 miles) or more without having to be
boosted by repeaters. In 2009 Kao was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Physics for his work. Plastic fibers, usually made of
polymethylmethacrylate, polystyrene, or polycarbonate, are cheaper to
produce and more flexible than glass fibers, but their greater attenuation
of light restricts their use to much shorter links within buildings
or automobiles.

https://www.britannica.com/science/fiber-optics
A fiber-optic cable, also known as an optical-fiber cable, is an assembly similar to an electrical cable, but
containing one or more optical fibers that are used to carry light. The optical fiber elements are typically
individually coated with plastic layers and contained in a protective tube suitable for the environment where the
cable will be deployed. Different types of cable[1] are used for different applications, for example, long
distance telecommunication, or providing a high-speed data connection between different parts of a building.

Design[edit]
Optical fiber consists of a core and a cladding layer, selected for total internal reflection due to the difference in
the refractive index between the two. In practical fibers, the cladding is usually coated with a layer of acrylate
polymer or polyimide. This coating protects the fiber from damage but does not contribute to its optical
waveguide properties. Individual coated fibers (or fibers formed into ribbons or bundles) then have a
tough resin buffer layer or core tube(s) extruded around them to form the cable core. Several layers of
protective sheathing, depending on the application, are added to form the cable. Rigid fiber assemblies
sometimes put light-absorbing ("dark") glass between the fibers, to prevent light that leaks out of one fiber from
entering another. This reduces cross-talk between the fibers, or reduces flare in fiber bundle imaging
applications.[2]

For indoor applications, the jacketed fiber is generally enclosed, with a bundle of flexible
fibrous polymer strength members like aramid (e.g. Twaron or Kevlar), in a lightweight plastic cover to form a
simple cable. Each end of the cable may be terminated with a specialized optical fiber connector to allow it to
be easily connected and disconnected from transmitting and receiving equipment.

For use in more strenuous environments, a much more robust cable construction is required. In loose-tube
construction the fiber is laid helically into semi-rigid tubes, allowing the cable to stretch without stretching the
fiber itself. This protects the fiber from tension during laying and due to temperature changes. Loose-tube fiber
may be "dry block" or gel-filled. Dry block offers less protection to the fibers than gel-filled, but costs
considerably less. Instead of a loose tube, the fiber may be embedded in a heavy polymer jacket, commonly
called "tight buffer" construction. Tight buffer cables are offered for a variety of applications, but the two most
common are "Breakout" and "Distribution". Breakout cables normally contain a ripcord, two non-conductive
dielectric strengthening members (normally a glass rod epoxy), an aramid yarn, and 3 mm buffer tubing with an
additional layer of Kevlar surrounding each fiber. The ripcord is a parallel cord of strong yarn that is situated
under the jacket(s) of the cable for jacket removal.[3] Distribution cables have an overall Kevlar wrapping, a
ripcord, and a 900 micrometer buffer coating surrounding each fiber. These fiber units are commonly bundled
with additional steel strength members, again with a helical twist to allow for stretching.
A critical concern in outdoor cabling is to protect the fiber from damage by water. This is accomplished by use
of solid barriers such as copper tubes, and water-repellent jelly or water-absorbing powder surrounding the
fiber.
Finally, the cable may be armored to protect it from environmental hazards, such as construction work or
gnawing animals. Undersea cables are more heavily armored in their near-shore portions to protect them from
boat anchors, fishing gear, and even sharks, which may be attracted to the electrical power that is carried to
power amplifiers or repeaters in the cable.
Modern cables come in a wide variety of sheathings and armor, designed for applications such as direct burial
in trenches, dual use as power lines, installation in conduit, lashing to aerial telephone poles, submarine
installation, and insertion in paved streets.
Capacity and market[edit]
In September 2012, NTT Japan demonstrated a single fiber cable that was able to transfer 1 petabit per second
(1015bits/s) over a distance of 50 kilometers.[4]
Modern fiber cables can contain up to a thousand fibers in a single cable, with potential bandwidth in the
terabytes per second. In some cases, only a small fraction of the fibers in a cable may be actually "lit".
Companies can lease or sell the unused fiber to other providers who are looking for service in or through an
area. Companies may "overbuild" their networks for the specific purpose of having a large network of dark
fiber for sale, reducing the overall need for trenching and municipal permitting.[citation needed] They may also
deliberately under-invest to prevent their rivals from profiting from their investment.
The highest strand-count singlemode fiber cable commonly manufactured is the 864-count, consisting of 36
ribbons each containing 24 strands of fiber.[5]

Reliability and quality[edit]

Optical fibers are very strong, but the strength is drastically reduced by unavoidable microscopic surface flaws
inherent in the manufacturing process. The initial fiber strength, as well as its change with time, must be
considered relative to the stress imposed on the fiber during handling, cabling, and installation for a given set of
environmental conditions. There are three basic scenarios that can lead to strength degradation and failure by
inducing flaw growth: dynamic fatigue, static fatigues, and zero-stress aging.
Telcordia GR-20, Generic Requirements for Optical Fiber and Optical Fiber Cable, contains reliability and
quality criteria to protect optical fiber in all operating conditions.[6] The criteria concentrate on conditions in an
outside plant (OSP) environment. For the indoor plant, similar criteria are in Telcordia GR-409, Generic
Requirements for Indoor Fiber Optic Cable.[7]

Cable types[edit]

This section needs
expansion. You can help
by adding to it. (June
2008)

 OFC: Optical fiber, conductive

 OFN: Optical fiber, nonconductive
 OFCG: Optical fiber, conductive, general use
 OFNG: Optical fiber, nonconductive, general use
 OFCP: Optical fiber, conductive, plenum
 OFNP: Optical fiber, nonconductive, plenum
 OFCR: Optical fiber, conductive, riser
 OFNR: Optical fiber, nonconductive, riser
 OPGW: Optical fiber composite overhead ground wire
 ADSS: All-Dielectric Self-Supporting
 OSP: Fiber optic cable, outside plant
 MDU: Fiber optics cable, multiple dwelling unit

Jacket material[edit]
The jacket material is application-specific. The material determines the mechanical robustness, chemical and
UV radiation resistance, and so on. Some common jacket materials are LSZH, polyvinyl
chloride, polyethylene, polyurethane, polybutylene terephthalate, and polyamide.
Fiber material[edit]
There are two main types of material used for optical fibers: glass and plastic. They offer widely different
characteristics and find uses in very different applications. Generally, plastic fiber is used for very short-range
and consumer applications, whereas glass fiber is used for short/medium-range (multi-mode) and long-range
(single-mode) telecommunications.[8]

Color coding[edit]
Patch cords[edit]
The buffer or jacket on patchcords is often color-coded to indicate the type of fiber used. The strain relief "boot"
that protects the fiber from bending at a connector is color-coded to indicate the type of connection. Connectors
with a plastic shell (such as SC connectors) typically use a color-coded shell. Standard color codings for jackets
(or buffers) and boots (or connector shells) are shown below:

Cord jacket (or buffer) color

Color Meaning

  Orange multi-mode optical fiber

Aqua OM3 or OM4 10 G laser-optimized 50/125 µm multi-mode optical fiber

Erika violet[9] OM4 multi-mode optical fiber (some vendors)[10]

Lime
OM5 10 G wideband 50/125 µm multi-mode optical fiber
green[11]

Grey outdated color code for multi-mode optical fiber

Yellow single-mode optical fiber

Blue Sometimes used to designate polarization-maintaining optical fiber

Connector boot (or shell) colors

Color Meaning Comment

 Physical contact mostly used for single mode fibers; some manufacturers use this
  Blue
(PC), 0° for polarization-maintaining optical fiber.

Angle polished
Green
(APC), 8°

Physical contact
Black
(PC), 0°

Grey
Physical contact
multimode fiber connectors
(PC), 0°
Beige

Physical contact
White
(PC), 0°

High optical power. Sometimes used to connect external pump lasers or

Red
Raman pumps.

Remark: It is also possible that a small part of a connector is additionally color-coded, e.g. the lever of an E-
2000 connector or a frame of an adapter. This additional colour coding indicates the correct port for a
patchcord, if many patchcords are installed at one point.
Multi-fiber cables[edit]
Individual fibers in a multi-fiber cable are often distinguished from one another by color-coded jackets or
buffers on each fiber. The identification scheme used by Corning Cable Systems is based on EIA/TIA-598,
"Optical Fiber Cable Color Coding." EIA/TIA-598 defines identification schemes for fibers, buffered fibers,
fiber units, and groups of fiber units within outside plant and premises optical fiber cables. This standard allows
for fiber units to be identified by means of a printed legend. This method can be used for identification of fiber
ribbons and fiber subunits. The legend will contain a corresponding printed numerical position number or color
for use in identification.[12]

EIA598-A Fiber Color Chart[12] Color coding of Premises Fiber Cable[12]

Positio Fiber Type /

Jacket color Position Jacket color Diameter (µm) Jacket color
n Class

Multimode Ia 50/125   Orange

1 13
blue blue/black
 Multimode Ia 62.5/125 Slate
2 14
orange orange/black

Multimode Ia 85/125 Blue

3 15
green green/black
Multimode Ia 100/140 Green

4 16
brown brown/black Singlemode IVa All Yellow

Singlemode IVb All Red

5 17
slate slate/black

6 18
white white/black

7 19
red red/black

8 20
black black/yellow

9 21
yellow yellow/black

10 22
violet violet/black

11 23
rose rose/black

12 24
aqua aqua/black

The colour code used above resembles PE copper cables used in standard telephone wiring.
In the UK the colour codes for COF200 and 201 are different. Each 12 fibre bundle or element within a Cable
Optical Fibre 200/201 cable is coloured as follows:
 Blue
 Orange
 Green
 Red
 Grey
 Yellow
 Brown
 Violet
 Black
 White
 Pink
 Turquoise
Each element is in a tube within the cable (not a blown fibre tube) The cable elements start with the red tube
and are counted around the cable to the green tube. Active elements are in white tubes and yellow fillers or
dummies are laid in the cable to fill it out depending on how many fibres and units exists – can be up to 276
fibres or 23 elements for external cable and 144 fibres or 12 elements for internal. The cable has a central
strength member normally made from fiberglass or plastic. There is also a copper conductor in external cables.

Propagation speed and delay[edit]

Optical cables transfer data at the speed of light in glass. This is the speed of light in vacuum divided by
the refractive index of the glass used, typically around 180,000 to 200,000 km/s, resulting in 5.0 to 5.5
microseconds of latency per km. Thus the round-trip delay time for 1000 km is around 11 milliseconds.[13]

Losses[edit]
Signal loss in optic fiber is measured in decibels (dB). A loss of 3 dB across a link means the light at the far end
is only half the intensity of the light that was sent into the fiber. A 6 dB loss means only one quarter of the light
made it through the fiber. Once too much light has been lost, the signal is too weak to recover and the link
becomes unreliable and eventually ceases to function entirely. The exact point at which this happens depends on
the transmitter power and the sensitivity of the receiver.
Typical modern multimode graded-index fibers have 3 dB per kilometre of attenuation (signal loss) at a
wavelength of 850 nm, and 1 dB/km at 1300 nm. Singlemode loses 0.35 dB/km at 1310 nm and 0.25 dB/km at
1550 nm. Very high quality singlemode fiber intended for long distance applications is specified at a loss of
0.19 dB/km at 1550 nm.[14] Plastic optical fiber (POF) loses much more: 1 dB/m at 650 nm. POF is large core
(about 1 mm) fiber suitable only for short, low speed networks such as TOSLINK optical audio or for use
within cars.[15]
Each connection between cables adds about 0.6 dB of average loss, and each joint (splice) adds about 0.1 dB.
[16]
Invisible infrared light (750 nm and larger) is used in commercial glass fiber communications because it has
lower attenuation in such materials than visible light. However, the glass fibers will transmit visible light
somewhat, which is convenient for simple testing of the fibers without requiring expensive equipment. Splices
can be inspected visually, and adjusted for minimal light leakage at the joint, which maximizes light
transmission between the ends of the fibers being joined.
The charts Understanding wavelengths in fiber optics[17] and Optical power loss (attenuation) in
fiber[18] illustrate the relationship of visible light to the infrared frequencies used, and show the absorption
water bands between 850, 1300 and 1550 nm.
Safety[edit]
The infrared light used in telecommunications cannot be seen, so there is a potential laser safety hazard to
technicians. The eye's natural defense against sudden exposure to bright light is the blink reflex, which is not
triggered by infrared sources. In some cases the power levels are high enough to damage eyes, particularly
when lenses or microscopes are used to inspect fibers that are emitting invisible infrared light. Inspection
microscopes with optical safety filters are available to guard against this. More recently indirect viewing aids
are used, which can comprise a camera mounted within a handheld device, which has an opening for the
connectorized fiber and a USB output for connection to a display device such as a laptop. This makes the
activity of looking for damage or dirt on the connector face much safer.
Small glass fragments can also be a problem if they get under someone's skin, so care is needed to ensure that
fragments produced when cleaving fiber are properly collected and disposed of appropriately.

Hybrid cables[edit]
There are hybrid optical and electrical cables that are used in wireless outdoor Fiber To The Antenna (FTTA)
applications. In these cables, the optical fibers carry information, and the electrical conductors are used to
transmit power. These cables can be placed in several environments to serve antennas mounted on poles,
towers, and other structures.
According to Telcordia GR-3173, Generic Requirements for Hybrid Optical and Electrical Cables for Use in
Wireless Outdoor Fiber To The Antenna (FTTA) Applications, these hybrid cables have optical fibers, twisted
pair/quad elements, coaxial cables or current-carrying electrical conductors under a common outer jacket. The
power conductors used in these hybrid cables are for directly powering an antenna or for powering tower-
mounted electronics exclusively serving an antenna. They have a nominal voltage normally less than 60 VDC
or 108/120 VAC.[19] Other voltages may be present depending on the application and the relevant National
Electrical Code (NEC).
These types of hybrid cables may also be useful in other environments such as Distributed Antenna System
(DAS) plants where they will serve antennas in indoor, outdoor, and roof-top locations. Considerations such as
fire resistance, Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL) Listings, placement in vertical shafts, and
other performance-related issues need to be fully addressed for these environments.
Since the voltage levels and power levels used within these hybrid cables vary, electrical safety codes consider
the hybrid cable to be a power cable, which needs to comply with rules on clearance, separation, etc.

Innerducts[edit]
Innerducts are installed in existing underground conduit systems to provide clean, continuous, low-friction
paths for placing optical cables that have relatively low pulling tension limits. They provide a means for
subdividing conventional conduit that was originally designed for single, large-diameter metallic conductor
cables into multiple channels for smaller optical cables.
Types[edit]
Innerducts are typically small-diameter, semi-flexible subducts. According to Telcordia GR-356, there are three
basic types of innerduct: smoothwall, corrugated, and ribbed.[20] These various designs are based on the profile
of the inside and outside diameters of the innerduct. The need for a specific characteristic or combination of
characteristics, such as pulling strength, flexibility, or the lowest coefficient of friction, dictates the type of
innerduct required.
Beyond the basic profiles or contours (smoothwall, corrugated, or ribbed), innerduct is also available in an
increasing variety of multiduct designs. Multiduct may be either a composite unit consisting of up to four or six
individual innerducts that are held together by some mechanical means, or a single extruded product having
multiple channels through which to pull several cables. In either case, the multiduct is coilable, and can be
pulled into existing conduit in a manner similar to that of conventional innerduct.
Placement[edit]
Innerducts are primarily installed in underground conduit systems that provide connecting paths
between manhole locations. In addition to placement in conduit, innerduct can be directly buried, or aerially
installed by lashing the innerduct to a steel suspension strand.
As stated in GR-356, cable is typically placed into innerduct in one of three ways. It may be

1. Pre-installed by the innerduct manufacturer during the extrusion process,

2. Pulled into the innerduct using a mechanically assisted pull line, or
3. Blown into the innerduct using a high air volume cable blowing apparatus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_cable

A fiber-optic cable is made up of incredibly thin strands of glass or plastic known as optical fibers; one cable
can have as few as two strands or as many as several hundred. Each strand is less than a tenth as thick as a
human hair and can carry something like 25,000 telephone calls, so an entire fiber-optic cable can easily carry
several million calls.

Fiber-optic cables carry information between two places using entirely optical (light-based) technology.
Suppose you wanted to send information from your computer to a friend's house down the street using fiber
optics. You could hook your computer up to a laser, which would convert electrical information from the
computer into a series of light pulses. Then you'd fire the laser down the fiber-optic cable. After traveling down
the cable, the light beams would emerge at the other end. Your friend would need a photoelectric cell (light-
detecting component) to turn the pulses of light back into electrical information his or her computer could
understand. So the whole apparatus would be like a really neat, hi-tech version of the kind of telephone you can
make out of two baked-bean cans and a length of string!

How fiber-optics works

Artwork: Total internal reflection keeps light rays bouncing down the inside of a fiber-optic cable.

Light travels down a fiber-optic cable by bouncing repeatedly off the walls. Each tiny photon (particle of light)
bounces down the pipe like a bobsleigh going down an ice run. Now you might expect a beam of light, traveling
in a clear glass pipe, simply to leak out of the edges. But if light hits glass at a really shallow angle (less than 42
degrees), it reflects back in again—as though the glass were really a mirror. This phenomenon is called total
internal reflection. It's one of the things that keeps light inside the pipe.
 The other thing that keeps light in the pipe is the structure of
the cable, which is made up of two separate parts. The main
part of the cable—in the middle—is called the core and that's
the bit the light travels through. Wrapped around the outside of
the core is another layer of glass called the cladding. The
cladding's job is to keep the light signals inside the core. It can
do this because it is made of a different type of glass to the
core. (More technically, the cladding has a lower refractive
index.)

Types of fiber-optic cables

Optical fibers carry light signals down them in what are

called modes. That sounds technical but it just means different ways of traveling: a mode is simply the path that
a light beam follows down the fiber. One mode is to go straight down the middle of the fiber. Another is to
bounce down the fiber at a shallow angle. Other modes involve bouncing down the fiber at other angles, more
or less steep.

Artworks: Above: Light travels in different ways in single-mode and multi-mode fibers. Below: Inside a typical
single-mode fiber cable (not drawn to scale). The thin core is surrounded by cladding roughly ten times bigger
in diameter, a plastic outer coating (about twice the diameter of the cladding), some strengthening fibers made
of a tough material such as Kevlar®, with a protective outer jacket on the outside.

The simplest type of optical fiber is called single-mode. It has a very thin core about 5-10 microns (millionths of
a meter) in diameter. In a single-mode fiber, all signals travel straight down the middle without bouncing off the
edges (yellow line in diagram). Cable TV, Internet, and telephone signals are generally carried by single-mode
fibers, wrapped together into a huge bundle. Cables like this can send information over 100 km (60 miles).

Another type of fiber-optic cable is

called multi-mode. Each optical fiber in a
multi-mode cable is about 10 times bigger than
one in a single-mode cable. This means light
beams can travel through the core by following
a variety of different paths (yellow, orange,
blue, and cyan lines)—in other words, in
multiple different modes. Multi-mode cables
can send information only over relatively short
distances and are used (among other things) to
link computer networks together.

Even thicker fibers are used in a medical tool

called a gastroscope (a type of endoscope),
which doctors poke down someone's throat for
detecting illnesses inside their stomach. A
gastroscope is a thick fiber-optic cable
consisting of many optical fibers. At the top
end of a gastroscope, there is an eyepiece and a
lamp. The lamp shines its light down one part of the cable into the patient's stomach. When the light reaches the
stomach, it reflects off the stomach walls into a lens at the bottom of the cable. Then it travels back up another
part of the cable into the doctor's eyepiece. Other types of endoscopes work the same way and can be used to
inspect different parts of the body. There is also an industrial version of the tool, called a fiberscope, which can
be used to examine things like inaccessible pieces of machinery in airplane engines.

Main 3

Uses for fiber optics

Shooting light down a pipe seems like a neat scientific party trick, and you might not think there'd be many
practical applications for something like that. But just as electricity can power many types of machines, beams
of light can carry many types of information—so they can help us in many ways. We don't notice just how
commonplace fiber-optic cables have become because the laser-powered signals they carry flicker far beneath
our feet, deep under office floors and city streets. The technologies that use it—computer networking,
broadcasting, medical scanning, and military equipment (to name just four)—do so quite invisibly.

Photo: Working on fiber-optic cables. Picture by Nathanael Callon, courtesy of US Air Force.

Computer networks

Fiber-optic cables are now the main way of carrying information over long distances because they have three
very big advantages over old-style copper cables:

 Less attenuation: (signal loss) Information travels roughly 10 times further before it needs amplifying—
which makes fiber networks simpler and cheaper to operate and maintain.
 No interference: Unlike with copper cables, there's no "crosstalk" (electromagnetic interference)
between optical fibers, so they transmit information more reliably with better signal quality
 Higher bandwidth: As we've already seen, fiber-optic cables can carry far more data than copper cables
of the same diameter.

You're reading these words now thanks to the Internet. You probably chanced upon this page with a search
engine like Google, which operates a worldwide network of giant data centers connected by vast-capacity fiber-
optic cables (and is now trying to roll out fast fiber connections to the rest of us). Having clicked on a search
engine link, you've downloaded this web page from my web server and my words have whistled most of the
way to you down more fiber-optic cables. Indeed, if you're using fast fiber-optic broadband, optical fiber cables
are doing almost all the work every time you go online. With most high-speed broadband connections, only the
last part of the information's journey (the so-called "last mile" from the fiber-connected cabinet on your street to
your house or apartment) involves old-fashioned wires. It's fiber-optic cables, not copper wires, that now carry
"likes" and "tweets" under our streets, through an increasing number of rural areas, and even deep beneath the
oceans linking continents. If you picture the Internet (and the World Wide Web that rides on it) as a global
spider's web, the strands holding it together are fiber-optic cables; according to some estimates, fiber cables
cover over 99 percent of the Internet's total mileage, and carry over 99 percent of all international
communications traffic.

The faster people can access the Internet, the more they can—and will—do online. The arrival of broadband
Internet made possible the phenomenon of cloud computing (where people store and process their data
remotely, using online services instead of a home or business PC in their own premises). In much the same way,
the steady rollout of fiber broadband (typically 5–10 times faster than conventional DSL broadband, which uses
ordinary telephone lines) will make it much more commonplace for people to do things like streaming movies
online instead of watching broadcast TV or renting DVDs. With more fiber capacity and faster connections,
we'll be tracking and controlling many more aspects of our lives online using the so-called Internet of things.

But it's not just public Internet data that streams down fiber-optic lines. Computers were once connected over
long distances by telephone lines or (over shorter distances) copper Ethernet cables, but fiber cables are
increasingly the preferred method of networking computers because they're very affordable, secure, reliable,
and have much higher capacity. Instead of linking its offices over the public Internet, it's perfectly possible for a
company to set up its own fiber network (if it can afford to do so) or (more likely) buy space on a private fiber
network. Many private computer networks run on what's called dark fiber, which sounds a bit sinister, but is
simply the unused capacity on another network (optical fibers waiting to be lit up).

The Internet was cleverly designed to ferry any kind of information for any kind of use; it's not limited to
carrying computer data. While telephone lines once carried the Internet, now the fiber-optic Internet carries
telephone (and Skype) calls instead. Where telephone calls were once routed down an intricate patchwork of
copper cables and microwave links between cities, most long-distance calls are now routed down fiber-optic
lines. Vast quantities of fiber were laid from the 1980s onward; estimates vary wildly, but the worldwide total is
believed to be several hundred million kilometers (enough to cross the United States about a million times). In
the mid-2000s, it was estimated that as much as 98 percent of this was unused "dark fiber"; today, although
much more fiber is in use, it's still generally believed that most networks contain anywhere from a third to a half
dark fiber.

Photo: Fiber-optic networks are expensive to construct (largely because it costs so much to dig up streets).
Because the labor and construction costs are much more expensive than the cable itself, many network
operators deliberately lay much more cable than they currently need. Picture by Chris Willis courtesy of US Air
Force.

Broadcasting

Back in the early 20th century, radio and TV broadcasting was born from a relatively simple idea: it was
technically quite easy to shoot electromagnetic waves through the air from a single transmitter (at the
broadcasting station) to thousands of antennas on people's homes. These days, while radio still beams through
the air, we're just as likely to get our TV through fiber-optic cables.

Cable TV companies pioneered the transition from the 1950s onward, originally using coaxial cables (copper
cables with a sheath of metal screening wrapped around them to prevents crosstalk interference), which carried
just a handful of analog TV signals. As more and more people connected to cable and the networks started to
offer greater choice of channels and programs, cable operators found they needed to switch from coaxial cables
to optical fibers and from analog to digital broadcasting. Fortunately, scientists were already figuring out how
that might be possible; as far back as 1966, Charles Kao (and his colleague George Hockham) had done the
math, proving how a single optical fiber cable might carry enough data for several hundred TV channels (or
several hundred thousand telephone calls). It was only a matter of time before the world of cable TV took notice
—and Kao's "groundbreaking achievement" was properly recognized when he was awarded the 2009 Nobel
Prize in Physics.

Apart from offering much higher capacity, optical fibers suffer less from interference, so offer better signal
(picture and sound) quality; they need less amplification to boost signals so they travel over long distances; and
they're altogether more cost effective. In the future, fiber broadband may well be how most of us watch
television, perhaps through systems such as IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), which uses the Internet's
standard way of carrying data ("packet switching") to serve TV programs and movies on demand. While the
copper telephone line is still the primary information route into many people's homes, in the future, our main
connection to the world will be a high-bandwidth fiber-optic cable carrying any and every kind of information.

Medicine

Medical gadgets that could help doctors peer inside our bodies without cutting them open were the first proper
application of fiber optics over a half century ago. Today, gastroscopes (as these things are called) are just as
important as ever, but fiber optics continues to spawn important new forms of medical scanning and diagnosis.

One of the latest developments is called a lab on a fiber, and involves inserting hair-thin fiber-optic cables, with
built-in sensors, into a patient's body. These sorts of fibers are similar in scale to the ones in communication
cables and thinner than the relatively chunky light guides used in gastroscopes. How do they work? Light zaps
through them from a lamp or laser, through the part of the body the doctor wants to study. As the light whistles
through the fiber, the patient's body alters its properties in a particular way (altering the light's intensity or
wavelength very slightly, perhaps). By measuring the way the light changes (using techniques such
as interferometry), an instrument attached to the other end of the fiber can measure some critical aspect of how
the patient's body is working, such as their temperature, blood pressure, cell pH, or the presence of medicines in
their bloodstream. In other words, rather than simply using light to see inside the patient's body, this type of
fiber-optic cable uses light to sense or measure it instead.

Military

Photo: Fiber optics on the battlefield. This Enhanced Fiber-Optic Guided Missile (EFOG-M) has an infrared
fiber-optic camera mounted in its nose so that the gunner firing it can see where it's going as it travels. Picture
courtesy of US Army.

It's easy to picture Internet users linked together by giant webs of fiber-optic cables; it's much less obvious that
the world's hi-tech military forces are connected the same way. Fiber-optic cables are inexpensive, thin,
lightweight, high-capacity, robust against attack, and extremely secure, so they offer perfect ways to connect
military bases and other installations, such as missile launch sites and radar tracking stations. Since they don't
carry electrical signals, they don't give off electromagnetic radiation that an enemy can detect, and they're
robust against electromagnetic interference (including systematic enemy "jamming" attacks). Another benefit is
the relatively light weight of fiber cables compared to traditional wires made of cumbersome and expensive
copper metal. Tanks, military airplanes, and helicopters have all been slowly switching from metal cables to
fiber-optic ones. Partly it's a matter of cutting costs and saving weight (fiber-optic cables weigh nearly 90
percent less than comparable "twisted-pair" copper cables). But it also improves reliability; for example, unlike
traditional cables on an airplane, which have to be carefully shielded (insulated) to protect them against
lightning strikes, optical fibers are completely immune to that kind of problem.

Who invented fiber optics?

 1840s: Swiss physicist Daniel Colladon (1802–1893) discovered he could shine light along a water pipe.
The water carried the light by internal reflection.
 1870: An Irish physicist called John Tyndall (1820–1893) demonstrated internal reflection at London's
Royal Society. He shone light into a jug of water. When he poured some of the water out from the jug,
the light curved round following the water's path. This idea of "bending light" is exactly what happens in
fiber optics. Although Colladon is the true grandfather of fiber-optics, Tyndall often earns the credit.
 1930s: Heinrich Lamm and Walter Gerlach, two German students, tried to use light pipes to make a
gastroscope—an instrument for looking inside someone's stomach.
  1950s: In London, England, Indian physicist Narinder Kapany (1926–) and British physicist Harold
Hopkins (1918–1994) managed to send a simple picture down a light pipe made from thousands of glass
fibers. After publishing many scientific papers, Kapany earned a reputation as the "father of fiber
optics."
 1957: Three American scientists at the University of Michigan, Lawrence Curtiss, Basil Hirschowitz,
and Wilbur Peters, successfully used fiber-optic technology to make the world's first gastroscope.
 1960s: Chinese-born US physicist Charles Kao (1933–2018) and his colleague George Hockham
realized that impure glass was no use for long-range fiber optics. Kao suggested that a fiber-optic cable
made from very pure glass would be able to carry telephone signals over much longer distances and was
awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for this ground-breaking discovery.
 1960s: Researchers at the Corning Glass Company made the first fiber-optic cable capable of carrying
telephone signals.
 ~1970: Donald Keck and colleagues at Corning found ways to send signals much further (with less loss)
prompting the development of the first low-loss optical fibers.
 1977: The first fiber-optic telephone cable was laid between Long Beach and Artesia, California.
 1988: The first transatlantic fiber-optic telephone cable, TAT8, was laid between the United States,
France, and the UK.
 2019: According to TeleGeography, there are currently around 378 fiber-optic submarine cables
(carrying communications under the world's oceans), stretching a total of 1.2 million km (0.7 million
miles).

https://www.explainthatstuff.com/fiberoptics.html
Advantages and disadvantages

Fiber optic cables are used mainly for their advantages over copper cables. Advantages include:

 Support of higher bandwidth capacities.

 Light can travel further without needing as much of a signal boost.

 They are less susceptible to interference, such as electromagnetic interference.

 They can be submerged in water- fiber optics are used in more at-risk environments like undersea
cables.

 Fiber optic cables are also stronger, thinner and lighter than copper wire cables

 They do not need to be maintained or replaced as frequently.

However, it is important to note that fiber optics do have disadvantages users should know before handling
them. These disadvantages include:

 Copper wire is often cheaper than fiber optics.

 Glass fiber also requires more protection within an outer cable than copper.

 Installing new cabling is labor-intensive.

 Fiber optic cables are often more fragile. For example, the fibers can be broken or a signal can be lost if
the cable is bent or curved around a radius of a few centimeters.
Fiber optics uses

Computer networking is a common fiber optics use case due to optical fiber's ability to transmit data and
provide high bandwidth. Similarly, fiber optics is frequently used in broadcasting and electronics to provide
better connections and performance. Internet and cable television are two of the more commonly found usages
of fiber optics. Fiber optics can be installed to support long-distance connections between computer networks in
different locations.

Military and space industries also make use of optical fiber as a means of communication and signal transfer, in
addition to its ability to provide temperature sensing. Fiber optic cables can be beneficial due to their lighter
weight and smaller size.

Fiber optics is frequently used in a variety of medical instruments to provide precise illumination. It also
increasingly enables biomedical sensors that aid in minimally invasive medical procedures. Because optical
fiber is not subject to electromagnetic interference, it is ideal for various tests like MRI scans. Other medical
applications for fiber optics include X-ray imaging, endoscopy, light therapy and surgical microscopy.

https://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/fiber-optics-optical-fiber

Advantages of Fiber Optic Cables

Fiber cables offer several advantages over long-distance copper cabling.

 Fiber optics support a higher capacity. The amount of network bandwidth a fiber cable can carry easily
exceeds that of a copper cable with similar thickness. Fiber cables rated at 10 Gbps, 40 Gbps, and 100
Gbps are standard.
 Because light can travel for much longer distances over a fiber cable without losing its strength, the need
for signal boosters is lessened.
 A fiber optic cable is less susceptible to interference. A copper network cable requires shielding to
protect it from electromagnetic interference. While this shielding helps, it is not sufficient to prevent
interference when many cables are strung together in proximity to one another. The physical properties
of fiber optic cables avoid most of these problems.
 Fiber to the Home, Other Deployments, and Fiber Networks

Whereas most fiber optics are installed to support long-distance connections between cities and countries, some
residential internet providers have invested in extending their fiber installations to suburban neighborhoods for
direct access by households. Providers and industry professionals call these last mile installations.

Some better-known fiber-to-the-home services in the market include Verizon FIOS and Google Fiber. These
services can provide gigabit internet speeds to households. However, they typically also offer lower capacity
packages to customers. Different home-consumer packages are often abbreviated with these acronyms:

 FTTP (Fiber to the Premises): Fiber that's laid all the way to the building.
 FTTB (Fiber to the Building/Business/Block): The same as FTTP.
 FTTC/N (Fiber to the Curb of Node): Fiber that is laid to the node but then copper wires complete the
connection inside the building.
 Direct fiber: Fiber that leaves the central office and is attached directly to one customer. This provides
the greatest bandwidth, but direct fiber is expensive.
 Shared fiber: Similar to direct fiber except that as the fiber approaches the premises of nearby
customers, it splits into other optical fibers for those users.

What Is Dark Fiber?

The term dark fiber (often spelled dark fibre or called unlit fibre) most commonly refers to installed fiber optic
cabling that is not currently in use. The term sometimes also refers to privately operated fiber installations.

https://www.lifewire.com/fiber-optic-cable-817874
What are Fiber Optics?
Fiber optics (optical fibers) are long, thin strands of very pure glass about the diameter of a human hair. They
are arranged in bundles called optical cables and used to transmit light signals over long distances.

If you look closely at a single optical fiber, you will see that it has the following parts:

 Core - Thin glass center of the fiber where the light travels
 Cladding - Outer optical material surrounding the core that reflects the light back into the core
 Buffer coating - Plastic coating that protects the fiber from damage and moisture
Hundreds or thousands of these optical fibers are arranged in bundles in optical cables. The bundles are
protected by the cable's outer covering, called a jacket.

Optical fibers come in two types:

 Single-mode fibers
 Multi-mode fibers
See Tpub.com: Mode Theory for a good explanation.
Single-mode fibers have small cores (about 3.5 x 10-4 inches or 9 microns in diameter) and transmit
infrared laser light (wavelength = 1,300 to 1,550 nanometers). Multi-mode fibers have larger cores (about 2.5 x
10-3 inches or 62.5 microns in diameter) and transmit infrared light (wavelength = 850 to 1,300 nm) from light-
emitting diodes (LEDs).

Some optical fibers can be made from plastic. These fibers have a large core (0.04 inches or 1 mm diameter)
and transmit visible red light (wavelength = 650 nm) from LEDs.

Let's look at how an optical fiber works.

How Does an Optical Fiber Transmit Light?

Diagram of total internal reflection in an optical

fiber

Suppose you want to shine a flashlight beam

down a long, straight hallway. Just point the
beam straight down the hallway -- light travels
in straight lines, so it is no problem. What if the
hallway has a bend in it? You could place a
mirror at the bend to reflect the light beam
around the corner. What if the hallway is very winding with multiple bends? You might line the walls with
mirrors and angle the beam so that it bounces from side-to-side all along the hallway. This is exactly what
happens in an optical fiber.

The light in a fiber-optic cable travels through the core (hallway) by constantly bouncing from the cladding
(mirror-lined walls), a principle called total internal reflection. Because the cladding does not absorb any light
from the core, the light wave can travel great distances.

However, some of the light signal degrades within the fiber, mostly due to impurities in the glass. The extent
that the signal degrades depends on the purity of the glass and the wavelength of the transmitted light (for
example, 850 nm = 60 to 75 percent/km; 1,300 nm = 50 to 60 percent/km; 1,550 nm is greater than 50
percent/km). Some premium optical fibers show much less signal degradation -- less than 10 percent/km at
1,550 nm.

A Fiber-Optic Relay System

To understand how optical fibers are used in communications systems, let's look at an example from a World
War II movie or documentary where two naval ships in a fleet need to communicate with each other while
maintaining radio silence or on stormy seas. One ship pulls up alongside the other. The captain of one ship
sends a message to a sailor on deck. The sailor translates the message into Morse code (dots and dashes) and
 uses a signal light (floodlight with a venetian blind type shutter on it) to send the message to the other ship. A
sailor on the deck of the other ship sees the Morse code message, decodes it into English and sends the message
up to the captain.

Now, imagine doing this when the ships are on either side of the ocean separated by thousands of miles and you
have a fiber-optic communication system in place between the two ships. Fiber-optic relay systems consist of
the following:

 Transmitter - Produces and encodes the light signals

 Optical fiber - Conducts the light signals over a distance
 Optical regenerator - May be necessary to boost the light signal (for long distances)
 Optical receiver - Receives and decodes the light signals
Transmitter

The transmitter is like the sailor on the deck of the sending ship. It receives and directs the optical device to turn
the light "on" and "off" in the correct sequence, thereby generating a light signal.

The transmitter is physically close to the optical fiber and may even have a lens to focus the light into the fiber.
Lasers have more power than LEDs, but vary more with changes in temperature and are more expensive. The
most common wavelengths of light signals are 850 nm, 1,300 nm, and 1,550 nm (infrared, non-visible portions
of the spectrum).

Optical Regenerator

As mentioned above, some signal loss occurs when the light is transmitted through the fiber, especially over
long distances (more than a half mile, or about 1 km) such as with undersea cables. Therefore, one or
more optical regenerators is spliced along the cable to boost the degraded light signals.

An optical regenerator consists of optical fibers with a special coating (doping). The doped portion is "pumped"
with a laser. When the degraded signal comes into the doped coating, the energy from the laser allows the
doped molecules to become lasers themselves. The doped molecules then emit a new, stronger light signal with
the same characteristics as the incoming weak light signal. Basically, the regenerator is a laser amplifier for the
incoming signal.

Optical Receiver

The optical receiver is like the sailor on the deck of the receiving ship. It takes the incoming digital light signals,
decodes them and sends the electrical signal to the other user's computer, TV or telephone (receiving ship's
captain). The receiver uses a photocell or photodiode to detect the light.
 Advantages of Fiber Optics
Why are fiber-optic systems revolutionizing telecommunications? Compared to conventional metal wire
(copper wire), optical fibers are:

Less expensive - Several miles of optical cable can be made cheaper than equivalent lengths of copper wire.
This saves your provider (cable TV, Internet) and you money. Thinner - Optical fibers can be drawn to smaller
diameters than copper wire. Higher carrying capacity - Because optical fibers are thinner than copper wires,
more fibers can be bundled into a given-diameter cable than copper wires. This allows more phone lines to go
over the same cable or more channels to come through the cable into your cable TV box. Less signal
degradation - The loss of signal in optical fiber is less than in copper wire. Light signals - Unlike electrical
signals in copper wires, light signals from one fiber do not interfere with those of other fibers in the same cable.
This means clearer phone conversations or TV reception. Low power - Because signals in optical fibers degrade
less, lower-power transmitters can be used instead of the high-voltage electrical transmitters needed for copper
wires. Again, this saves your provider and you money. Digital signals - Optical fibers are ideally suited for
carrying digital information, which is especially useful in computer networks. Non-flammable - Because no
electricity is passed through optical fibers, there is no fire hazard. Lightweight - An optical cable weighs less
than a comparable copper wire cable. Fiber-optic cables take up less space in the ground. Flexible - Because
fiber optics are so flexible and can transmit and receive light, they are used in many flexible digital cameras for
the following purposes:

 Medical imaging - in bronchoscopes, endoscopes, laparoscopes

 Mechanical imaging - inspecting mechanical welds in pipes and engines (in airplanes, rockets, space
shuttles, cars)
 Plumbing - to inspect sewer lines
Because of these advantages, you see fiber optics in many industries, most notably telecommunications and
computer networks. For example, if you telephone Europe from the United States (or vice versa) and the signal
is bounced off a communications satellite, you often hear an echo on the line. But with transatlantic fiber-optic
cables, you have a direct connection with no echoes.

How Are Optical Fibers Made?

MCVD process for making the preform blank

IMAGE COURTESY FIBERCORE LTD.

Now that we know how fiber-optic systems work

and why they are useful -- how do they make
them? Optical fibers are made of extremely
pure optical glass. We think of a glass window as
 transparent, but the thicker the glass gets, the less transparent it becomes due to impurities in the glass.
However, the glass in an optical fiber has far fewer impurities than window-pane glass. One company's
description of the quality of glass is as follows: If you were on top of an ocean that is miles of solid core optical
fiber glass, you could see the bottom clearly.

Making optical fibers requires the following steps:

1. Making a preform glass cylinder

2. Drawing the fibers from the preform
3. Testing the fibers
Making the Preform Blank

The glass for the preform is made by a process called modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD).

In MCVD, oxygen is bubbled through solutions of silicon chloride (SiCl4), germanium chloride (GeCl4) and/or
other chemicals. The precise mixture governs the various physical and optical properties (index of refraction,
coefficient of expansion, melting point, etc.). The gas vapors are then conducted to the inside of a synthetic
silica or quartz tube (cladding) in a special lathe. As the lathe turns, a torch is moved up and down the outside of
the tube. The extreme heat from the torch causes two things to happen:

Lathe used in preparing the preform blank

PHOTO COURTESY FIBERCORE LTD.

 The silicon and germanium react with oxygen, forming silicon dioxide (SiO2) and germanium dioxide
(GeO2).
 The silicon dioxide and germanium dioxide deposit on the inside of the tube and fuse together to form glass.
The lathe turns continuously to make an even coating and consistent blank. The
purity of the glass is maintained by using corrosion-resistant plastic in the gas
delivery system (valve blocks, pipes, seals) and by precisely controlling the
flow and composition of the mixture. The process of making the preform blank
is highly automated and takes several hours. After the preform blank cools, it is
tested for quality control (index of refraction).

Drawing Fibers from the Preform Blank

Once the preform blank has been tested, it gets loaded into a fiber drawing
tower.
 Diagram of a fiber drawing tower used to draw optical glass fibers from a preform blank

The blank gets lowered into a graphite furnace (3,452 to 3,992 degrees Fahrenheit or 1,900 to 2,200 degrees
Celsius) and the tip gets melted until a molten glob falls down by gravity. As it drops, it cools and forms a
thread.

The operator threads the strand through a series of coating cups (buffer coatings) and ultraviolet light curing
ovens onto a tractor-controlled spool. The tractor mechanism slowly pulls the fiber from the heated preform
blank and is precisely controlled by using a laser micrometer to measure the diameter of the fiber and feed the
information back to the tractor mechanism. Fibers are pulled from the blank at a rate of 33 to 66 ft/s (10 to 20
m/s) and the finished product is wound onto the spool. It is not uncommon for spools to contain more than 1.4
miles (2.2 km) of optical fiber.

Testing the Finished Optical Fiber

The finished optical fiber is tested for the following:

Finished spool of optical fiber

PHOTO COURTESY CORNING

 Tensile strength - Must withstand 100,000 lb./in2 or more

 Refractive index profile - Determine numerical aperture as well as screen for optical defects
 Fiber geometry - Core diameter, cladding dimensions and coating diameter are uniform
 Attenuation - Determine the extent that light signals of various wavelengths degrade over distance
 Information carrying capacity (bandwidth) - Number of signals that can be carried at one time (multi-
mode fibers)
 Chromatic dispersion - Spread of various wavelengths of light through the core (important for
bandwidth)
 Operating temperature/humidity range
 Temperature dependence of attenuation
 Ability to conduct light underwater - Important for undersea cables
Once the fibers have passed the quality control, they are sold to telephone companies, cable companies and
network providers. Many companies are currently replacing their old copper-wire-based systems with new
fiber-optic-based systems to improve speed, capacity and clarity.
Physics of Total Internal Reflection

Total internal reflection in an optical fiber

When light passes from a medium with one index of refraction (m1) to another medium with a lower index of
refraction (m2), it bends or refracts away from an imaginary line perpendicular to the surface (normal line). As
the angle of the beam through m1 becomes greater with respect to the normal line, the refracted light through
m2 bends further away from the line.

At one particular angle (critical angle), the refracted light will not go into m2, but instead will travel along the
surface between the two media (sine [critical angle] = n2/n1 where n1 and n2 are the indices of refraction [n1 is
greater than n2]). If the beam through m1 is greater than the critical angle, then the refracted beam will be
reflected entirely back into m1 (total internal reflection), even though m2 may be transparent!

In physics, the critical angle is described with respect to the normal line. In fiber optics, the critical angle is
described with respect to the parallel axis running down the middle of the fiber. Therefore, the fiber-optic
critical angle = (90 degrees - physics critical angle).

In an optical fiber, the light travels through the core (m1, high index of refraction) by constantly reflecting from
the cladding (m2, lower index of refraction) because the angle of the light is always greater than the critical
angle. Light reflects from the cladding no matter what angle the fiber itself gets bent at, even if it's a full circle!

Because the cladding does not absorb any light from the core, the light wave can travel great distances.
However, some of the light signal degrades within the fiber, mostly due to impurities in the glass. The extent
that the signal degrades depends upon the purity of the glass and the wavelength of the transmitted light (for
example, 850 nm = 60 to 75 percent/km; 1,300 nm = 50 to 60 percent/km; 1,550 nm is greater than 50
percent/km). Some premium optical fibers show much less signal degradation -- less than 10 percent/km at
1,550 nm.

https://computer.howstuffworks.com/fiber-optic.htm/printable
Conclusion

Today’s global businesses demand faster, more secure and larger capacity communication systems for their
network operations. Fiber optic technology is expected to play a major part in this growth. A Research and
Markets study determined that the compound annual growth rate for the fiber optic market could reach 8.5
percent by 2025, meaning more industries will be looking to the solutions presented by this technology. From
healthcare systems to the marine environment, fiber optic cable is proving to be a crucial component of
industrial infrastructure.
Fiber optic cable assemblies are also playing an increasingly vital role in residential applications. Homeowners
now expect high-speed internet access as part of their daily lives, and telecom and data industry leaders are
turning to fiber optic technology as a clean, reliable way to provide expected services. In the next five years and
beyond, contractors expect to use fiber optic cable for improved connectivity in a wide variety of projects.

Development of Fiber Optic Technology

Fiber optic cables consist of either one or many thin strands of glass, which are protected by a flexible,
transparent sheath. Rather than using electrical pulses to communicate information, this technology uses pulses
of light. As a result, it offers technically boundless performance capabilities.
The capacity may be even more than you imagine: National Geographic reports that the newest transatlantic
cable is capable of transmitting 100 hours of digital video or 30 million phone calls from one side of the ocean
to the other at speeds of a single second.
There are plenty of applications for fiber optic cable assemblies, and their uses are only growing. This
technology is the backbone of military networking, medical imaging and laser practices, and private and public
networking for cable and internet.
One of the reasons fiber cables are so widely used is because they are extremely secure. This technology does
not contain an electromagnetic field, so data cannot be intercepted, slowed, or jumbled with other signals.
The safety, speed, and security of fiber optics does come at a higher cost relative to other cable options on the
market. But compared to the rising costs of copper, which is used in other cable technology, it remains
competitively priced in the marketplace. Plus, metallic wiring is naturally thicker, which reduces load capacity
and makes installation difficult in more challenging environments. Fiber optics provide the clarity and safety
that modern homeowners and business leaders expect in infrastructure projects.

Fiber Optics in New Projects

Forbes reported recently that cities around the globe are beginning to use fiber optic cables for their
communication needs. San Francisco, for example, is creating a city-wide fiber optic network as a way of
treating the internet as a public utility.
The Pacific Light Cable Network, meanwhile, has plans to run 8,000 miles of fiber optic cable under the sea
from Los Angeles to Hong Kong. To meet the growing demand for bandwidth arising from the popularity of
social media and Google, this massive project will result in 144 terabyte capacity both ways.
Additionally, the expansion of new 5G wireless technology is being made possible with the help of fiber optic
cable. Wired Magazine reports that telecom leaders are relying on millions of miles of new cables, allowing 5G
devices across the globe to better connect and network with one another. With the price of smartphones
decreasing in developing countries such as China, India and Brazil, this connection has never been more
important for so many.

New Trends In Speed And Efficiency

Fiber optic technology itself continues to develop alongside the increased demand for greater speed and
efficiency. New devices called optical couplers and optical switches support a new communication trend called
AON, or all-optical networks. This technology allows data to be transmitted without any electrical processing,
which in turn can result in farther transmission distances.
Another recent improvement in fiber cables is known as WDM, or wavelength division multiplexing. This is a
process that increases bandwidth capacity even further by allowing different carriers to transmit optical signals.
Then there’s OAM, or orbital angular momentum. This new technology forces light waves to twist in a spiral,
increasing their ability to transmit information in a highly scalable manner. Experts at Technology
Networks have even speculated that this method of transmission could increase transmission speeds by 100
times over the next few years.
Yet another advancement that is improving fiber optic technology is called ROF, or radio over fiber. This
system allows for the transmission of radio frequencies using optical fibers, which are not impacted by
electromagnetic interference. This has potential for development in the aviation industry as well as in public
works projects, stadium construction, and commercial building construction, according to Wire Tech World.

Increased Demands For Technology

Part of the reason that industries are rapidly improving fiber optic technology is simply because both business
owners and everyday individuals expect greater transmission speed and quality with each passing day. Over the
next five years, citizens of every country throughout the world will be consuming more social media, streaming
video, networked gaming, and other services that rely on fast, clean internet.
Temperature sensors used in wearable devices and smartphones also use fiber optic technology. According to
the research firm Markets And Markets, this sector of the technology will be in high demand for healthcare
equipment, energy companies, and the automotive industry. As a result, it is expected to grow by more than $2
billion over the next five years. And as new inventions become commonplace, new needs for fiber optics will
present themselves.
Government Technology magazine calls fiber optic technology “future proof,” as telecom giants like Comcast
are transitioning from copper coaxial cable to hybrid or fully fiber optic cable assemblies. Experts believe that
fiber optics may prove to be more useful than wireless for increasingly sophisticated electronics. So far, fiber
cables don’t seem to degrade like other infrastructure. It’s likely that the future of fiber optics will even outlast
the next generation of devices and industrial requirements.
https://www.nai-group.com/future-of-fiber-optic-technology/
The more and more widespread use of optical fibres in communications is boosted by the growing demand for
higher performance and speed. Therefore, we can obviously forecast a brilliant future for the optical technology
but this statement, even if sharable, is quite generic, also because optical fibres are the base for applications in
several other applicative contexts. Market data are clear: from 3 billion dollars in 2016, in 2021 the global
market of cables, fibre sensors and connectors will reach about 5 billions, with an expectation of 9 billions
within 2025. This market can be variously segmented, for instance either according to the type of fibre or the
material composing fibres, whether of glass, or better amorphous silica or plastic, or depending on the use
ambit: communications, industry, defence, healthcare and security, ambits where optical fibres are then
proposed for highly diversified applications.

The market of optical fibres can be variously segmented, for instance either according to the type of fibre or the
material composing fibres, or depending on the use ambit.

An important future trend is called AON, All Optical Networks, where all signals will be processed in the
optical domain without electric/electronic processing.
Optical fibre communications
The invention of the optical fibre cable is acknowledged to Kuen Kao and Hockham (1965) as result of a
research aimed at replacing coaxial cables but just in 1970 Maurer, Keck, Schultz and Zimar, from the United
States company Corning, discovered the possibility of implementing communications on long distances
exploiting the reflection of light waves between core and cladding. Actually, nothing would have happened if a
suitable light source for the signal modulation, i.e. the laser, invented in 1960, would have not been available.
Since that time onwards, optical communications have gone on evolving and today an important future trend is
called AON, All Optical Networks, with the fully optical data transmission: all signals will be processed in the
optical domain without electric/electronic processing. Currently, both signal processing and switching/routing,
that is to say the addressing of a signal towards a particular utility, occur in the electric domain: optical signals
must be converted into electric signals before being processed and addressed to the expected destination and
afterwards they must be reconverted into optical form, for the long-distance transmission. These conversions
(O-E-O conversions) determine delays and overloads in the network, limiting the data rate. Therefore, we need
optical switches and routers, and only limited AON functions have been implemented in commercial networks
until now, to the extent that AON is really a technology of the future, as on the other hand highlighted by the
generational subdivision of networks: first generation, only copper cables, with switching and routing
performed by electric/electronic devices; second generation, transmission medium of fibre but switching and
routing through electric/electronic devices; third generation, fully optical networks. Before a synthetic
presentation of the devices for an AON, a hint at the most diffused transmission technique used in optical
networks, WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing), where different carriers are used to transmit more
distinct optical signals; more in detail, a multiplexer is used in transmission to send various signals together and
a demultiplexer in reception to separate them.

Currently, the most diffused transmission technique in optical networks is the Wavelength Division
Multiplexing, where different carriers are used to transmit more distinct optical signals.
 

Also transmission techniques are evolving, like in the case of the Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing,
aimed at increasing the quantity of transferred data, through a connection, in a given time interval.
 

Referring to the devices for AON, the first is the optical amplifier, of 1R type (only Regeneration, signal
regeneration), unlike electro-optical amplifiers that are 3R (Regeneration, Re-clocking, Reshaping), which act
therefore on other signal parameters, hindering the complete transparency that is indispensable for the optical
nets of the future. Still speaking of other devices: optical couplers, which split the light exiting from a fibre
towards more fibres or recombine it into a single fibre; filters, which collect a particular frequency from a
WDM signal; optical switches, which avoid the O-E-O conversion. If the target of the AON of the future is
granting utmost speed and efficiency, also transmission techniques are evolving towards this goal, and it is the
case of the DWDM, (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technique, aimed at increasing the available
band, that is to say the quantity of data that can be transferred, through a connection, in a given time interval.
The term “band”, however, refers also to an interval of frequencies (or also of wavelengths, since the
wavelength is the inverse of frequency) and there are some bands where the signal loss is very low, like the C-
band (1530 nm-1565 nm), and some types of optical fibres have been developed precisely to operate in this
band where not only fibres but also the whole of transmission systems can operate more efficiently. DWDM
uses the C- band, with a “dense” spacing of channels, which can be 40, spaced by 100 Ghz, or 80, spaced by 50
GHz. In short, we have the transmission on the same fibre of several optical signals with different wavelength,
with a frequency modulation, hence the possibility of transforming a single fibre channel into manifold virtual
channels.

It is in course a constant growth of “sensing” potentialities of optical fibres and in the future a wider and wider
use of optical fibre sensors will occur, for the precise and reliable measuring of physical magnitudes.
Another trend, already in course but with strengthening potentialities, is ROF, Radio Over Fiber, where there is
a mix of optical fibres and radiofrequency, with RF signals that modulate the light in one fibre. The
conventional medium to transmit RF signals is the coaxial cable, undoubtedly heavy, cumbersome, of limited
capacity, with signal losses on medium-long distances and sensitive to electromagnetic interferences, unlike
optical fibres that are instead immune from them, and this is the winning plus. The central element of the
system is the electro/optical modular that modulates the light intensity through RF signals; in reception, an
optical/electric modulator recovers the RF frame, producing current signals that are proportional to the intensity
of the received light. Among the ambits that are assessing notable advantages, it is worth mentioning avionics,
especially due to the elimination of interferences and the lightness of cables, but also civil contexts, in buildings
and in stadiums, where the big traffic capacity of fibres eliminates congestion problems. Among rising sectors,
the one of self-driving cars, where they have started some experimentations on the use of ROF. Still speaking of
the future prospects of optical fibres applications in communications, it is worth underlining the role played by
standard organizations, which are fundamental to provide certain references to manufacturers and users in the
development of products and solutions. An emblematic recent case is the IEEE 802.3cc-2017 standard for
Ethernet 25-Gigabit communications on single-mode optical fibres, on 10 and 40Km distances, depending on
specifications. This standard meets the requirements of higher speed of Ethernet connections, network widely
used in industrial and commercial applications, providing indications about how proceeding to upgrades while
minimizing installation times and costs.   
The sensing capacities of optical fibres
Different sensor typologies based on optical fibres have been available on the market for a long time but we can
notice a constant growth of “sensing” potentialities, so that we can foresee in the future a wider and wider use
of what was just a transmission medium for communications at the beginning, also for the precise and reliable
measuring of the most various physical magnitudes, thanks to the most recent innovations in the optics field. As
preliminary remark, it is worth reminding that the target of a measuring system is providing an indication about
the state of a physical system, and this measurement needs a “sensor”, primary element of a measuring chain
that converts the input variable into a suitable signal for the processing of the control part, generally producing
an electric signal univocally linked with the initial magnitude. In the case of sensors based on optical fibres, any
variation of the characteristics of the transmitted light becomes the medium to measure physical parameters
such as force, pressure, temperature, speed and acceleration, parameters that in their turn can be referred to
different phenomena appearing in the real world.

Among the advantages of optical fibre sensors, the electromagnetic interference immunity (EMI) and
radiofrequency ones (RFI)
The characteristic parameters of light signals are amplitude/intensity, phase, wavelength, polarization,
time/frequency, and the variation of any of these parameters, caused by an external influence, determines the
operational principle of that particular optical fibre sensor. The general principle is the following: a light signal
is transmitted from a source, along the fibre until the sensor element that performs the “sensing” of that single
defined parameter; the sensor modulates the light characteristics; the modulated light is transmitted by the
sensor to a Signal Processing unit, with conversion into a signal that can be processed by a control system.
Among the advantages of these sensors, the electromagnetic interference immunity (EMI) and radiofrequency
ones (RFI), the elimination of eventual conductive paths in high-voltage environments, granted safety for
explosion-risk environments, resistance to high temperatures, up to almost 1500 °C, lightness, miniaturization
and low sensor consumption, very high sensitivity. These characteristics, which highlight the applicability of
sensors to optical fibres wherever it is not possible to use conventional sensors, or anyway to obtain adequate
performances, are widening their use in industrial environments in general, in Oil&Gas in particular, and in the
construction field, to monitor potential yielding of structure parts. Various surveys highlight a market prospect
growing by about 10% from now until 2020, which becomes 15% extending to 2023, with the prevalence of
solutions dedicated to the continuous temperature sensing. 
New fibres for new performances
Optical fibre manufacturers go on researching and developing more and more performing optical fibres, and this
is part of the fibre future, too. To make an example, they have recently standardized a new multi-mode fibre,
called OM5, which promises higher performances than those at disposal until now. To qualify this novelty
better, it is necessary a short synthesis of the OM, Optical Multimode, meaning, which until now provided for
four degrees that take into account parameters such as physical sizes, attenuation, bandwidth: OM1, OM2, OM3
and OM4. OM1 and OM2 fibres are scarcely used as intended for LED light source now replaced by laser.
OM3 are laser-optimized fibres with 50 microns of diameter, with EMB (Effective Modal Bandwidth) of 2000
MHz*km at 850nm, for 10Gbit/sec transmissions, whereas OM4, they too laser-optimized and with 50 microns,
have an EMB of 4700 MHz*km at 850 nm, they are for 10Gbit/sec but on longer distances. The key
characteristic of a multimode is its “modal bandwidth”, capacity of transmitting a certain quantity of
information on a certain distance, and this is expressed in Mhz*km.

In the past, speaking of optical fibres meant mentioning an almost exotic technology, prerogative of sector
players only; today they are a more and more pervasive presence.
Concerning the EMB, since fibres are certified for determinate minimum bandwidths as guarantee of ensured
performance, the test is carried out with the EMB (Effective Modal Bandwidth) method that replicates the real
performance. Exemplifying, on a OM4 it is granted a minimum band frequency of 4700 Mhz*km, with laser
light source with 850nm wavelength, which is one of the three optimal transmission windows: combining
attenuation, refraction and dispersion, there are in fact three transmission “windows” with growing
performances in terms of bandwidth and distance: at 850nm (800-900), at 1310nm (1250-1350) and at 1550nm.
These synthetic notes highlight that many of the fibre performances depend on manufacturing processes, to
obtain especially more and more precise refraction index profiles, without perturbations and defects. The
evolution of implementation techniques has led to OM5, new multimode fibre called also WBMMF (Wideband
Multimode Fiber), which supports the applications of future development thanks to the possibility of using the
new SWDM (Short Wavelength Division Multiplexing) techniques developed to transmit 40Gb/sec
and 100GB/sec.
Conclusion
The future of optical fibres consists in an unstoppable expansion in a growing number of applicative contexts.
In this article, we have just hinted at the potentialities in course, privileging the contexts – the standard ones
under certain respects – of communications and sensors, besides security, medicine and military, and without
forgetting less sophisticated but important ambits, like lighting or the matching of optical fibres and fabrics to
achieve new impressive effects. In the past, speaking of optical fibres meant mentioning an almost exotic
technology, prerogative of sector players only; today they are a more and more pervasive presence.
http://www.wiretechworld.com/the-future-of-optical-fibres/