Lecture 1

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Lecture-1: Introduction
Yello color jacket -> single mode fiber

Orange color jacket -> Multi mode fiber

Optical Fiber:
Flexible glass/plastic structure that can carry light over long distance.

It has two parts:

1) Core: Doped glass (thin)


2) Cladding: Pure glass (thick)

Optical fiber can guide light over a long distance.

Optical fiber in our daily life:


Medicine:

Endoscopy: Fiber is used to image the human body by entering light into human body.

Laparoscopy: Fiber is used to carry out minimum invasive surgery. Invasive surgery means

A medical procedure that invades (enters) the body, usually by cutting or

puncturing the skin or by inserting instruments into the body.

Monitoring Civil Structures:

We can use Optical Fiber to monitor the strength of a structure. It can be used as real time

monitoring. It can be used to monitor health of flyover, railway bridge and building.

Taiwan’s First Ever All-Round Full-Bridge Fiber-Optic Monitoring System:

Optical Cables are used to monitor 24H monitoring of the bridge. If any abnormality is detected

immediately notified to the management unit.

Cold Lighting:

This lighting is used to illuminate precious artwork. Old artworks are very sensitive to light. So it
is good to use illuminated light by optical fiber as the artworks a very sensitive to thermal
radiation.

Improving Ambience:

We can use optical fiber for ambient light for decorating room, hotels or any other things by
using optical fiber.
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Telecommunication:

Optical fiber is very important in telecommunication system. Optical fiber is used for
high-speed communication for example 5G. We can now communicate with someone at a very
long distance. For example:

If we want to communicate with

someone at New York. First, we

sent a signal from our phone and

it is carried through a towers

using microwave link for a short

distance. Then the signal needs to be sent over large distance e.g. Roorkee to New York. To then
this data we use Optical fiber cables. It gives us very high speed and long-distance
communication service (10-100Gb/s).

Submarine cable is used to send signals under the sea surface for a long distance. For short
distance we can use underground optical fiber networks.

Fig: Submarine Cable Map

Fiber Optic: Some Historical Facts


First attempt:
The term Fibre Optics was coined by N S Kapany, bord in Moga, Punjab, India and educated in
England.
He conducted the fist Ph. D. thesis on “Fibre Optics” form the University of London in 1955.
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He was able to transmit signals over a meter. The fiber was very lossy. He used a bundle of fiber
to transmit signals over a meter.
At that time people was unable to transfer signals over kilometers by optical fibers. Also laser
was not available at that time.

The revolution (Invention of laser):


May 16, 1960: Theodore Maiman demonstrated the first laser at Hughes research Laboratories
in Malibu.
After 6 months,
December 12,1960: Ali Javan made first helium-neon laser at Bell Labs the first laser to emit a
steady beam.
This invention has changed many things in the field of photonics. Because of the laser was very
powerful, directional, coherent, monochromatic.

People tried to use this laser in telecommunication. People used fiber for communication in the
open atmosphere. But it was very lossy signal due to various kinds of environmental problems.

Fiber Communication Takes off:


In 1965 at Standard Telecommunication Laboratory in England a young Chinese engineer
Charles K Kao was still pursuing the idea of optical communication through thin hair fibers.

At that time the fiber had a loss of 1000 dB/km (Only 1% light remains after 20m long fiber).

In 1966 Kao and Hockham made a daring conclusion in a historic paper that
A fiber with 20dB/km loss can realize the dream of optical communication.
That means fiber loss should to reduce from 10100 to 102 .

In 1970 Corning Glass Work produced a fiber with 16 dB/km loss at 633nm wavelength.
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Within a decade the fiber loss could be brought down to ~1dB/km

Today we have fibers with loss <0.2dB/km

Kao in widely regarded as Father of Optical Fiber Communication and has been awarded 2009
Nobel Prize in Physics.

Block Diagram of Optical fiber communication:

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