What is a fiber optic cable? How does it work? Weak current people must know
As the network's demand for faster data transmission speeds continues to increase, fiber-optic cables have become more and more popular in the past few years. However, some people may still have no idea what fiber-optic cables are.
What is a fiber optic cable?
How does it work?
This article will take you to understand the definition of optical cable and the working principle of optical cable.
What is a fiber optic cable?
An optical fiber cable is an Ethernet cable composed of one or more optical fibers for data transmission.
It is a cable-like component used to carry light, and the price of optical cables is much higher than that of copper cables.
Fiber optic cables are specially designed to use optical pulses to support long-distance telecommunications and high-speed data transmission.
Under normal circumstances, fiber optic cables can run at speeds of 10 Gbps, 40 Gbps, or even 100 Gbps.
Therefore, it is widely used in most of the Internet, cable TV and telephone systems in the world.
What constitutes a fiber optic cable?
Generally, an optical cable is composed of five parts: core, cladding, coating, strengthening elements and outer sheath.
The "core" is a very thin strand of glass or plastic called an optical fiber.
The "cladding" is an insulating sleeve that closely surrounds the "core" and provides a lower refractive index for the fiber to work.
"Coating" is the protective layer of the optical fiber.
"Stiffening elements" or strengthening members help protect the core from squeezing forces and excessive tension during installation.
The outer sheath is used to protect the cable from environmental hazards.
How does fiber optic cable work?
After understanding "What is an optical cable", let's take a look at "How does it work" for an optical fiber cable? .
Light travels along the fiber optic cable by repeated reflections from the inner wall. The core and cladding bend the incident light at a certain angle and have its own refractive index. When the optical signal is sent through the fiber optic cable, they will bounce in a series of bounces. Reflecting from the core and cladding, this process is called total internal reflection.
Fiber optic cable type
Generally, there are two types of optical cables, namely single-mode fiber (SMF) and multi-mode fiber (MMF).
The core of a single-mode fiber is very thin, about 5-10 microns in diameter, while the core diameter of a multi-mode fiber is about 10 times that of a single-mode fiber. Generally, single-mode fibers used in telecommunications work at 1310nm or 1550nm wavelengths, while multimode fibers work at 850nm and 1300nm.
Compared with single-mode fiber, the transmission distance of multi-mode fiber is limited by model dispersion because it has a larger core size and supports multiple optical modes (from OM1 to OM5). Single-mode fiber is suitable for long-distance applications such as 100km between buildings, while multi-mode fiber is suitable for short-distance transmission within buildings, such as computer network links.
Summarize
This article mainly introduces what is optical cable, the working principle of optical cable, which is specially designed for the use of optical pulses, which can provide faster data transmission speed. In addition, both SMF and MMF can meet different transmission distance requirements.
