History of Fiber Optic Technology

People have used light to transmit information for hundreds of years.

However, it was not until the 1960s, with the invention of the laser, that
widespread interest in optical (light) systems for data communications began.
The invention of the laser prompted researchers to study the potential of fiber
optics for data communications, sensing, and other applications. Laser systems
could send a much larger amount of data than telephone, microwave, and other
electrical systems. The first experiment with the laser involved letting the laser
beam transmit freely through the air. Researchers also conducted experiments
letting the laser beam transmit through different types of waveguides. Glass
fibers, gas-filled pipes, and tubes with focusing lenses are examples of optical
waveguides. Glass fibers soon became the preferred medium for fiber optic
research.

Initially, the very large losses in the optical fibers prevented coaxial
cables from being replaced. Loss is the decrease in the amount of light reaching
the end of the fiber. Early fibers had losses around 1,000 dB/km to make them
impractical for communications use. In 1969, several scientists concluded that
impurities in the fiber material caused the signal loss in optical fibers. The basic
fiber material did not prevent the light signal from reaching the end of the fiber.
These researchers believed it was possible to reduce the losses in optical fibers
by removing the impurities. By removing the impurities, construction of low-
loss optical fibers was possible.
In 1970, Corning Glass Works made a multimode fiber with losses under 20
dB/km.
This same company, in 1972, made a high silica-core multimode optical
fiber with 4dB/km minimum attenuation (loss). Currently, multimode fibers can
have losses as low as 0.5 dB/km at wavelengths around 1300 nm.
Introduction:

Optical fiber has a number of advantages over the copper wire used to make
connections electrically. For example, optical fiber, being made of glass or
plastic, is immune to electromagnetic interference which is caused by
thunderstorms. Also, because light has a much higher frequency than any radio
signal we can generate, fiber has a wider bandwidth and can therefore carry
more information at one time.

Most telephone company long-distance lines are now of optical fiber.

Transmission on optical fiber wire requires repeaters at distance intervals. The
glass fiber requires more protection within an outer cable than copper. For these
reasons and because the installation of any new wiring is labor-intensive, few
communities yet have optical fiber wires or cables from the phone company's
branch office to local customers.

Transmitters
Fiber optic transmitters are devices that include an LED or laser source,
and signal conditioning electronics, to inject a signal into fiber. The modulated
light may be turned on or off, or may be linearly varied in intensity between two
predetermined levels. Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) have relatively large
emitting areas and as a result are not as good light sources as laser diodes.
However, they are widely used for short to moderate transmission distances
because they are much more economical. Laser diodes can couple many times
more power to optical fiber than LEDs. They are primarily used for
applications that require the transmission of signals over long distances.
 Important performance specifications to consider when searching for
fiber optic transmitters include data rate, transmitter rise time, wavelength,
spectral width, and maximum optical output power. Data rate is the number of
data bits transmitted in bits per second. Data rate is a way of expressing the
speed of the transceiver. In the approximation of a step function, the transmitter
rise time is the time required for a signal to change from a specified 10% to
90% of full power. Rise time is a way of expressing the speed of the
transmitter. Wavelength refers to the output wavelength of the transceiver. The
spectral width refers to the spectral width of the output signal.

Receivers
Fiber optic receivers are instruments that convert light into electrical
signals. They contain a photodiode semiconductor, signal conditioning circuitry,
and an amplifier. Fiber optic receivers use three types of photodiodes: positive-
negative (PN) junctions, positive-intrinsic-negative (PIN) photodiodes, and
avalanche photodiodes (APD). PIN photodiodes have a large, neutrally-doped
region between the p-doped and n-doped regions. APDs are PIN photodiodes
that operate with high reverse-bias voltages. In short wavelength fiber optic
receivers (400 nm to 1100 nm), the photodiode is made of silicon (Si). In long
wavelength systems (900 nm to 1700 nm), the photodiode is made of indium
gallium arsenide (InGaAs). With low-impedance amplifiers, bandwidth and
receiver noise decrease with resistance. With trans-impedance amplifiers, the
bandwidth of the receiver is affected by the gain of the amplifier. Typically,
fiber optic receivers include a removable adaptor for connections to other
devices. Data outputs include transistor-transistor logic (TTL), emitter-coupled
logic (ECL), video, radio frequency (RF), and complementary metal oxide
semiconductor (CMOS) signals. Also, it uses many types of connectors.
Fiber
Fiber is the medium to guide the light form the transmitter to the receiver.
It is classified into two types depending on the way the light is transmitted:
multimode fiber and single-mode fiber.

Multimode Fiber
Multimode fiber designed to transmit more than one light at a time. Fiber
diameter ranges from 50-to-100 micron. Multimode fibers can be divided in to
two categories Multimode Step-index Fiber and Multimode Graded-index Fiber.

In Multimode Step-index Fiber the lights are sent at angles lower than the
critical angle or straight (or simply the angle is zero). Any light angle exceed
the critical angle will cause it to penetrate through cladding (refracted) and
being lost as shown in Figure 1. Obviously light with lower angle which has
less number of reflection, reach the end faster than those with larger angle and
this will result in unstable wave light. To avoid this problem there should be
spacing between the light pulses, but this will limit the bandwidth and because
of that it is used for very short distance.

Figure 1, Multimode Step-index Fiber

The Multimode Graded-index Fiber designed to reduce the problem in

Multimode Step-Index fiber by making all the beams reaching the receiver at
the same time. This can be done by slowing down the ones with shorter distance
and increasing the speed for ones with longer distance, see Figure 2. This is
done in fiber implementation by increasing its refractive index at the center and
gradually decreases it toward the edges. In the Figure 2 we can see the light near
the edges is curved until it is reflected, this is due to the refraction caused by the
change in density.

Figure 2, Multimode Graded-Index Fiber

Single-Mode Fiber
In single-mode, only one light is transmitted in the fiber which diameter
ranges from 8.3 to 10 microns, see Figure 3. Since there is only one light the
problem associated with the multimode fiber does not exist and by this we can
have a higher transmission rate and also it can be used for longer distance. To
utilize the fiber a Wave-Division-Multiplexing (WDM) is used as it will be
described later.