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Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending Light through an Optical Fiber . The light forms an Electromagnetic Carrier Wave that is Modulated to carry information. First developed in the 1970s, fiber-optic communication systems have revolutionized the Telecommunications industry and played a major role in the advent of the Information Age . Because of its Advantages Over Electrical Transmission , the use of optical fiber has largely replaced copper wire communications in the developed world. The process of communicating using fiber-optics involves the following basic steps:
APPLICATIONS Fiber-optic cable is used by many telecommunications companies to transmit telephone signals, Internet communication, and cable television signals, sometimes all on the same Optical Fiber . Due to much lower Attenuation and Interference , optical fiber has large advantages over existing copper wire in long-distance and high-demand applications. However, infrastructure development within cities was relatively difficult and time-consuming, and fiber-optic systems were complex and expensive to install and operate. Due to these difficulties, fiber-optic communication systems have primarily been installed in long-distance applications, where they can be used to their full transmission capacity, offsetting the increased cost. Since the year 2000, the prices for fiber-optic communications have dropped considerably. The price for rolling out fiber to the home has currently become more cost-effective than that of rolling out a copper based network. Prices have dropped to $850 per subscriber in the US and lower in countries like The Netherlands, where digging costs are low. Since 1990, when Optical-amplification systems became commercially available, the telecommunications industry has laid a vast network of intercity and transoceanic fiber communication lines. By 2002, an intercontinental network of 250,000 km of Submarine Communications Cable with a capacity of 2.56 Tb /s was completed, and although specific network capacities are privileged information, telecommunications investment reports indicate that network capacity has increased dramatically since 2002. HISTORY The need for reliable long-distance communication systems has existed since antiquity. Over time, the sophistication of these systems has gradually improved, from Smoke Signal s to Telegraphs and finally to the first Coaxial Cable , put into service in 1940. As these communication systems improved, certain fundamental limitations presented themselves. Electrical systems were limited by their small Repeater spacing (the distance a signal can propagate before Attenuation requires the signal to be amplified), and the bit rate of Microwave systems was limited by their Carrier Frequency . In the second half of the twentieth century, it was realized that an optical carrier of information would have a significant advantage over the existing electrical and microwave carrier signals. However, no coherent light source or suitable transmission medium was available. Then, after the development of Laser s in the 1960s solved the first problem, development of high-quality optical fiber was proposed as a solution to the second. Optical fiber was finally developed in 1970 by Corning Glass Works with attenuation low enough for communication purposes (about 20 DB / Km ), and at the same time GaAs Semiconductor Lasers were developed that were compact and therefore suitable for fiber-optic communication systems. After a period of intensive research from 1975 to 1980, the first commercial fiber-optic communication system was developed, which operated at a wavelength around 0.8 µm and used GaAs semiconductor lasers. This ''first generation'' system operated at a bit rate of 45 Mbit/s with repeater spacing of up to 10 km. On 22 April, 1977, General Telephone and Electronics sent the first live telephone traffic through fiber optics, at 6 Mbit/s, in Long Beach, California. The ''second generation'' of fiber-optic communication was developed for commercial use in the early 1980s, operated at 1.3 µm, and used InGaAsP semiconductor lasers. Although these systems were initially limited by dispersion, in 1981 the Single-mode Fiber was revealed to greatly improve system performance. By 1987, these systems were operating at bit rates of up to 1.7 Gb /s with repeater spacing up to 50 km. The first Transatlantic Telephone Cable to use optical fiber was TAT-8 , based on Desurvire optimized laser amplification technology. It went into operation in 1988 . TAT-8 was developed as the first transatlantic undersea fiber optic link between the United States and Europe. TAT-8 is more than 3000 nautical miles in length and was the first oceanic fiber optic cable. It was designed to handle a mix of information. When inaugurated, it had an estimated lifetime in excess of 20 years. TAT-8 was the first of a new class of cables, even though it had already been used in long-distance land and short-distance undersea operations. Its installation was preceded by extensive deep-water experiments and trials conducted in the early 1980s to demonstrate the project's feasibility. Third-generation fiber-optic systems operated at 1.55 µm and had loss of about 0.2 dB/km. They achieved this despite earlier difficulties with Pulse-spreading at that wavelength using conventional InGaAsP semiconductor lasers. Scientists overcame this difficulty by using Dispersion-shifted Fiber s designed to have minimal dispersion at 1.55 µm or by limiting the laser spectrum to a single Longitudinal Mode . These developments eventually allowed 3rd generation systems to operate commercially at 2.5 Gbit/s with repeater spacing in excess of 100 km. The fourth generation of fiber-optic communication systems used Optical Amplification to reduce the need for repeaters and Wavelength-division Multiplexing to increase Fiber Capacity . These two improvements caused a revolution that resulted in the doubling of system capacity every 6 months starting in 1992 until a bit rate of 10 Tb /s was reached by 2001. Recently, bit-rates of up to 14 Tbit/s have been reached over a single 160 km line using optical amplifiers. The focus of development for the fifth generation of fiber-optic communications is on extending the wavelength range over which a WDM system can operate. The conventional wavelength window, known as the C band, covers the wavelength range 1.53-1.57 µm, and the new ''dry fiber'' has a low-loss window promising an extension of that range to 1.30 to 1.65 µm. Other developments include the concept of " Optical Solitons , " pulses that preserve their shape by counteracting the effects of dispersion with the Nonlinear Effects of the fiber by using pulses of a specific shape. In the late 1990s through 2000, the fiber optic communication industry became associated with the Dot-com Bubble . Industry promoters, and research companies such as KMI and RHK predicted vast increases in demand for communications bandwidth due to increased use of the Internet , and commercialization of various bandwidth-intensive consumer services, such as Video On Demand . Internet Protocol data traffic was said to be increasing exponentially, and at a faster rate than integrated circuit complexity had increased under Moore's Law . From the bust of the dot-com bubble through 2006, however, the main trend in the industry has been Consolidation of firms and Offshoring of manufacturing to reduce costs. TECHNOLOGY Modern fiber-optic communication systems generally include an optical transmitter to convert an electrical signal into an optical signal to send into the optical fiber, a fiber-optic cable routed through underground conduits and buildings, multiple kinds of amplifiers, and an optical receiver to recover the signal as an electrical signal. The information transmitted is typically Digital Information generated by computers, Telephone Systems , and Cable Television companies. Transmitters The most commonly-used optical transmitters are semiconductor devices such as Light-emitting Diode s (LEDs) and Laser Diode s. The difference between LEDs and laser diodes is that LEDs produce Incoherent Light , while laser diodes produce Coherent Light . For use in optical communications, semiconductor optical transmitters must be designed to be compact, efficient, and reliable, while operating in an optimal wavelength range, and directly modulated at high frequencies. In its simplest form, an LED is a forward-biased P-n Junction , emitting light through Spontaneous Emission , a phenomenon referred to as Electroluminescence . The emitted light is incoherent with a relatively wide spectral width of 30-60 nm. LED light transmission is also inefficient, with only about 1 % of input power, or about 100 microwatts, eventually converted into «launched power» which has been coupled into the optical fiber. However, due to their relatively simple design, LEDs are very useful for low-cost applications. Communications LEDs are most commonly made from Gallium Arsenide Phosphide (GaAsP) or Gallium Arsenide (GaAs). Because GaAsP LEDs operate at a longer wavelength than GaAs LEDs (1.3 micrometers vs. 0.81-0.87 micrometers), their output spectrum is wider by a factor of about 1.7. The large spectrum width of LEDs causes higher fiber dispersion, considerably limiting their bit rate-distance product (a common measure of usefulness). LEDs are suitable primarily for Local-area-network applications with bit rates of 10-100 Mbit/s and transmission distances of a few kilometers. LEDs have also been developed that use several Quantum Well s to emit light at different wavelengths over a broad spectrum, and are currently in use for local-area WDM networks. A semiconductor laser emits light through Stimulated Emission rather than spontaneous emission, which results in high output power (~100 mW) as well as other benefits related to the nature of coherent light. The output of a laser is relatively directional, allowing high coupling efficiency (~50 %) into single-mode fiber. The narrow spectral width also allows for high bit rates since it reduces the effect of Chromatic Dispersion . Furthermore, semiconductor lasers can be modulated directly at high frequencies because of short Recombination Time . Laser diodes are often directly Modulated , that is the light output is controlled by a current applied directly to the device. For very high data rates or very long distance ''links'', a laser source may be operated Continuous Wave , and the light modulated by an external device such as an Electroabsorption Modulator or Mach-Zehnder Interferometer . External modulation increases the achievable link distance by eliminating laser Chirp , which broadens the Linewidth of directly-modulated lasers, increasing the chromatic dispersion in the fiber. Fiber ''Main article: Optical Fiber .'' Optical fiber consists of a core, cladding, and a protective outer coating, which guides light along the core by Total Internal Reflection . The core, and the higher- Refractive-index cladding, are typically made of high-quality Silica glass, though they can both be made of plastic as well. An optical fiber can break if bent too sharply. Due to the microscopic precision required to align the fiber cores, connecting two optical fibers, whether done by fusion splicing or mechanical splicing, requires special skills and interconnection technology. |
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