Optical Fiber is a transmission line

Optical Fiber is a transmission line- or a kind of cable made of glass or plastic that is very smooth and smaller than a hair, and can be used to transmit light signals from one place to another. Light source used is usually laser or LED. This cable is approximately 120 micrometers in diameter. The light inside the optical fiber does not come out because the refractive index of the glass is larger than the refractive index of the air, because the laser has a very narrow spectrum. The optical fiber transmission speed is so high that it is great for use as a communication channel.

The development of current optical fiber technology, has been able to produce attenuation of less than 20 decibels (dB) / km. With a large bandwidth (bandwidth) so that the ability to transmit data into more and faster than the use of conventional cables. Thus, optical fibers are particularly suitable for use in telecommunication system applications. In principle, optical fiber reflects and refracts the amount of light that travels within it. The efficiency of the optical fiber is determined by the purity of the glass / glass composer. The purer the glass material, the less light is absorbed by the optical fiber.

History Fiber Optic Cable

The use of light as a carrier of information has actually been widely used since ancient times, just around the 1930s German scientists began experimenting to transmit light through materials called fiber optics. This experiment is also still quite primitive because the results achieved can not be directly utilized, but must go through further development and refinement. A further development was when British scientists in 1958 proposed a prototype of optical fibers that have been used today, consisting of glass core wrapped by other glasses. Around the early 1960s a fantastic change took place in Asia when Japanese scientists managed to create a type of optical fiber capable of transmitting images.

On the other hand, scientists besides trying to guide light pass through glass (optical fiber) but also try to "tame" the light. The hard work was successful when about 1959 laser was invented. The laser operates at a visible frequency area of about 1014 Hertz-15 Hertz or hundreds of thousands of times the microwave frequency. At first laser-generating equipment is still large and troublesome. Besides being inefficient, it can only function at very low temperatures. The laser also has not radiated straight. In very bright light conditions too, the jets easily twist to follow the density of the atmosphere. At that time, a laser beam within a distance of 1 km, can arrive at the final destination at many points with a distance deviation up to a meter count.