Till a few years ago, we used to depend upon co-axial cables to carry our valuable data, which was sent through it in the form of long and short electric pulses. These cables were made up of a core of highly conductive metals which provided the mode of transmission of this electric pulse. However, things changed when fiber optic cables were introduced.
The Principle behind Fiber Technology
Fiber optics is based upon the principle of guiding light through refraction of light. Light changes its speed and direction when it passes from one transparent medium to another. By a careful and clever arrangement, a light beam can be passed through a bend tube of glass without actually making it touch the edge of the glass tube. This principle was first demonstrated by Daniel Colladon and Jacques Babinet in 1840s and its practical application by Irish inventor John Tyndall.
The Rise of Fiber Optic Technology
The fiber optic technology came into being in the 1950s. However, during that time the technology to produce fiber optics was not cost-effective due to which they never found widespread industrial or civilian application. It was only during the early 1980s when fiber optics were first commercially produced (by engineers at the US firm General Electric who produced fused quartz ingots that were stretched to a length of 25 miles). Since then, fiber optic technology has spread from one country and region to another.
Fiber Optics in Long Distance Telecommunication
Telecommunication networks rely heavily on data transmission technology. Till about the 1990s, these networks depended upon a web of copper cables to communicate with each constituting node of the network. But after the technological breakthrough attained in the 1980s, fiber optic networks started to replace these wired cable networks.
The result of this switch was a phenomenal increase in the amount of data which could be carried across networks and that too without too much distortion and/or data loss. The biggest beneficiary of this development became long distance telecommunication networks.
The fact that light could propagate itself for longer distances without suffering from any significant attenuation vis-à-vis electrical signals minimized the need of repeaters to boost up the signal. Further, each fiber optic cable could carry light of different wave-lengths, thereby significantly increasing the number of data channels that could be sent through the cable.
Within a short area, such as a building, this meant that only one fiber optic cable was sufficient to fulfill the data transmission needs, something which would have required numerous cables in the conventional cable system. Such a network was also immune to any type of electrical interference. There is no cross talk or picking up of environment noise.
Fiber optics is the futuristic mode of data transmission. Once fully developed, it would revolutionize the way in which humans communicate with each other.
|
