Optical Fiber

Optical Fiber

Done by: Sun Yudong 1O2 (27)

History

Daniel Colladon first described this "light fountain" or "light pipe" in an 1842 article titled On the reflections of a ray of light inside a parabolic liquid stream. This particular illustration comes from a later article by Colladon, in 1884.

• Optic Fiber is an old and simple technology guarded by the principles of refraction

• Guiding of light by refraction, the principle that makes fiber optics possible, was first demonstrated by Daniel Colladon and Jacques Babinet in Paris in the early 1840s.

• John Tyndall included a demonstration of it in his public lectures in London a dozen years later.

History• Tyndall also wrote about the property of total internal reflection

in an introductory book about the nature of light in 1870: "When the light passes from air into water, the refracted ray is bent towards the perpendicular... When the ray passes from water to air it is bent from the perpendicular... If the angle which the ray in water encloses with the perpendicular to the surface be greater than 48 degrees, the ray will not quit the water at all: it will be totally reflected at the surface.... The angle which marks the limit where total reflection begins is called the limiting angle of the medium.

• For water this angle is 48°27', for flint glass it is 38°41', while for diamond it is 23°42'."

• Unpigmented human hairs have also been to shown to act as an optical fibre.

History• Practical applications, such as close internal illumination

during dentistry, appeared early in the twentieth century. • Image transmission through tubes was demonstrated

independently by the radio experimenter Clarence Hansell and the television pioneer John Logie Baird in the 1920s. The principle was first used for internal medical examinations by Heinrich Lamm in the following decade.

• In 1952, physicist Narinder Singh Kapany conducted experiments that led to the invention of optical fiber.

• Modern optical fibers, where the glass fiber is coated with a transparent cladding to offer a more suitable refractive index, appeared later in the decade.

History• Development then focused on fiber bundles for image

transmission. • The first fiber optic semi-flexible gastroscope was patented

by Basil Hirschowitz, C. Wilbur Peters, and Lawrence E. Curtiss, researchers at the University of Michigan, in 1956.

• In the process of developing the gastroscope, Curtiss produced the first glass-clad fibers; previous optical fibers had relied on air or impractical oils and waxes as the low-index cladding material.

• A variety of other image transmission applications soon followed.

History• In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, light was guided

through bent glass rods to illuminate body cavities. Alexander Graham Bell invented a 'Photophone' to transmit voice signals over an optical beam.

• Jun-ichi Nishizawa, a Japanese scientist at Tohoku University, also proposed the use of optical fibers for communications in 1963

• Nishizawa also invented the graded-index optical fiber as a channel for transmitting light from semiconductor lasers, which contributed to the development of the optical fibre

History• The crucial attenuation limit of 20 dB/km was first achieved in

1970, by researchers Robert D. Maurer, Donald Keck, Peter C. Schultz, and Frank Zimar working for American glass maker Corning Glass Works, now Corning Incorporated.

• They demonstrated a fiber with 17 dB/km attenuation by doping silica glass with titanium.

• A few years later they produced a fiber with only 4 dB/km attenuation using germanium dioxide as the core dopant.

• Such low attenuation ushered in optical fiber telecommunication.

• In 1981, General Electric produced fused quartz ingots that could be drawn into fiber optic strands 25 miles (40 km) long.

History• Attenuation in modern optical cables is far less than in

electrical copper cables, leading to long-haul fiber connections with repeater distances of 70–150 kilometers (43–93 mi).

• The erbium-doped fiber amplifier, which reduced the cost of long-distance fiber systems by reducing or eliminating optical-electrical-optical repeaters, was co-developed by teams led by David N. Payne of the University of Southampton and Emmanuel Desurvire at Bell Labs in 1986.

• Robust modern optical fiber uses glass for both core and sheath, and is therefore less prone to aging. It was invented by Gerhard Bernsee of Schott Glass in Germany in 1973.

History

• The emerging field of photonic crystals led to the development in 1991 of photonic-crystal fiber, which guides light by diffraction from a periodic structure, rather than by total internal reflection.

• The first photonic crystal fibers became commercially available in 2000.

• Photonic crystal fibers can carry higher power than conventional fibers and their wavelength-dependent properties can be manipulated to improve performance.

Optical Fiber

• An optical fiber is a thin, flexible, transparent fiber that acts as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber.

• The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of optical fibers is known as fiber optics.

• Optical fibers are widely used in fiber-optic communications, which permits transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data rates) than other forms of communication.

Optical Fiber• Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel

along them with less loss and are also immune to electromagnetic interference.

• Fibers are also used for illumination, and are wrapped in bundles so they can be used to carry images, thus allowing viewing in tight spaces. Specially designed fibers are used for a variety of other applications, including sensors and fiber lasers.

A TOSLINK fiber optic audio cable being illuminated at one end

Optical Fiber

• Optical fiber typically consists of a transparent core surrounded by a transparent cladding material with a lower index of refraction.

• Light is kept in the core by total internal reflection. This causes the fiber to act as a waveguide.

Optical Fiber

• Fibers that support many propagation paths or transverse modes are called multi-mode fibers (MMF), while those that only support a single mode are called single-mode fibers (SMF).– Multi-mode fibers generally have a larger core

diameter, and are used for short-distance communication links and for applications where high power must be transmitted.

– Single-mode fibers are used for most communication links longer than 1,050 meters (3,440 ft).

MMF and SMF

Optical Fiber

• Joining lengths of optical fiber is more complex than joining electrical wire or cable. The ends of the fibers must be carefully cleaved, and then spliced together either mechanically or by fusing them together with heat. Special optical fiber connectors for removable connections are also available.

Fiber Optic Connectors

Uses• The main use of optical fiber

is in long-distance communication (telecommunication).

• Since the light does not leak out of the fiber much as it travels, the light can go a long distance before the signal gets too weak.

• This is used to send telephone and internet signals between cities.

The layers in one kind of optical fiber.1.- Core 8 µm2.- Cladding 125 µm3.- Buffer 250 µm4.- Jacket 400 µm

Uses• Fiber is sometimes used for

shorter links too, such as to carry the sound signals between a compact disc player and a stereo receiver.

• The fibers used for these short links are often made of plastic. TOSLINK is the most common type of optical plug for stereos.

A TOSLINK plug

Uses

• Optical fibers can be used as sensors. • Special fibers are used for this, that change how

they pass light through when there is a change around the fiber.

• Sensors like this can be used to detect changes in temperature, pressure, and other things.

• These sensors are useful because they are small and do not need any electricity at the place where the sensing happens.

Uses• These fibers are also used to

carry light for humans to see. • This is sometimes used for

decoration, like fiber-optic Christmas trees.

• Sometimes it is used for lighting, when it is convenient to have the light bulb someplace other than where the light needs to be.

• This is sometimes used in signs and art for special effects.

Uses• A bundle of fibers can be used to

make a device called an endoscope or a fiberscope.

• This is a long thin probe that can be put into a small hole, that will send an image of what is inside through the fiber to a camera.

• Endoscopes are used by doctors to see inside the human body, and are sometimes used by engineers to see inside tight spaces in machines.

Uses• Optical fibers (with special chemicals added) can be used

as optical amplifiers. • This allows an optical signal to travel further between

endpoints, and without converting the optical signal to electrical and back, reducing the overall cost of the components.

• These optical amplifiers can also be used to create Lasers. • These are called fiber lasers. • They can be very powerful, because the long thin fiber is

easy to keep cool, and makes a good quality light beam.

Charles K. Kao• "Father of Fiber Optics“ or "Father of Fiber Optic

Communications“• awarded half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for

"groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication".

• In 1960s at STL, Kao and his co-workers did their pioneering work in the realisation of fiber optics as a telecommunications medium, by demonstrating that the high-loss of existing fibre optics arose from impurities in the glass, rather than from an underlying problem with the technology itself.

• Kao's study primarily convinced himself that the impurities in material caused the high light losses of those fibers.

Charles K. Kao

• Karbowiak now is regarded as one of the pioneers of photonics technology of Australia

• In 1965,Kao with Hockham concluded that the fundamental limitation for glass light attenuation is below 20 dB/km (decibels per kilometer, is a measure of the attenuation of a signal over a distance), which is a key threshold value for optical communication.

Charles K. Kao• They precisely measured the attenuation of light with

different wavelengths in glasses and other materials. • During this period, Kao pointed out that the high purity of

fused silica (SiO2) made it an ideal candidate for optical communication.

• MKao also stated that the impurity of glass material is the main cause for the dramatic decay of light transmission inside glass fiber, rather than fundamental physical effects such as scattering as many physicists thought at that time, and such impurity could be removed.

Charles K. Kao• When Kao first proposed that such glass fiber could be

used for long-distance information transfer and could replace copper wires which were used for telecommunication during that era, his ideas were widely disbelieved;

• later people realized that Kao's ideas revolutionized the whole communication technology and industry.

• In 1969, Kao with M.W. Jones measured the intrinsic loss of bulk-fused silica at 4 dB/km, which is the first evidence of ultra-transparent glass. Bell Labs started considering fiber optics seriously.

Charles K. Kao

• Kao developed important techniques • configurations for glass fiber waveguides, • and contributed to the development of

different fiber types and system devices, • which met both civil and military application

requirements, • and peripheral supporting systems for optical

fiber communication.

Charles K. Kao

• In mid-1970s, he did seminal work on glass fiber fatigue strength.

• At an early stage of developing optic fibers, Kao already strongly preferred single mode for long-distance optical communication, instead of using multi-mode systems.

• His vision later was followed and now is applied almost exclusively.

• He predicted in 1983 that world's seas would be littered with fiber optics, five years ahead of the time that such a trans-oceanic fiber-optic cable first became serviceable.