Skip to main content

How fiber-optics works


Fiber Optic Cable

A fiber-optic cable consist of highly thin rods of glass or plastic known as optical fibers; a cable can have at least two rods or as much as hundreds or more. Each rod is smaller than a tenth of thickness of human hair and can carry around 25,000 telephone calls, so one fiber-optic cable can comfortably carry million of calls or more.

Fiber-optic cables move data between two or more places making use of only optical (light-based) technology. If you want to send information from your  pc to a friend's pc across the street using fiber optic cable. You can connect your pc to a laser, which will convert information from your computer into a number of light pulses. After moving along the cable, the light beams will emerge at the other end. Your friend will require a photoelectric cell (light-detecting component) that converts the pulses of light back into electrical pulses his or her computer could read. So the whole setup would be like a cool, hi-tech version of a mini telephone network.

How fiber-optics works


Light moves along a fiber-optic cable by bouncing continuously off the walls. Each particle of light bounces down along the cable like a bobsleigh moving down the ice run. You may think that a beam of light, moving in a clear glass pipe, would just leak out of the edges. But if light strikes glass at a really small angle (smaller than 42 degrees), it is bounced back in again—as if the glass was a mirror. This process is known as total internal reflection,  which is one of the reasons that makes the light stay within the cable.  

 


The other reason that makes the light stay in the cable is its structure, made up of two different sections. The main section of the cable—in the centre—is known as the core and that's the part light moves through. Wrapped around the outer side of the core is different layer of glass known as the cladding. The cladding's role is to make the light signals stay within the core. It can perform this role because it is made of a type of glass different from that of the core.


 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Google Fiber Works

Some of us are old enough to recollect a time when everyone on the Internet used it through a dial-up connection. Your computer connected to a modem that noisily calls the phone number of an  ISP (Internet Service Provider) to allow you connect at 56 kilobits per second, if you were quite fortunate to have a faster modem. Web pages  load slowly onto pc screens.Pictures usually use a lot of time to fully show up. Software usually take hours to fully download. If you do not have a dedicated phone line, you would tie up the line, and the connection may trigger off if someone calls the phone line. We used  more of text than other bandwidth-hungry media out of need. Recently Internet connection speeds have increased tremendously from the use of broadband connections using technologies like cable and DSL (Digital Subscriber Lines) and 4G or LTE .  According to the FCC's standards, the new goal is for all household to have access to broadband with a minimum speed of...
3 comments
Read more

How Haptic Footwear Works

Wearable devices   are the coolest thing in electronics now. A lot of us are already using a contraption that monitors our steps and other fitness parameters. A wearable around for years is now in on the embedded electronics trend,is the shoe. Electronics in or on shoes are not totally strange concepts. We have seen shoes that light up when walking and shoe sensors that link up with fitness apps. And researchers have been working on several other handy features into footwear,such as  GPS tracking  to assist in knowing the whereabouts of Alzheimer's patients, sensors and wireless signals to assist in locating firefighters and other emergency workers in places where GPS may fail. Very Soon, we will have shoes that communicate with us using a   haptic feedback . You may not have thought about it , but haptic feedback is already around you,some of the experiences include vibrating actuators present in numerous cellphones, tablets and game controllers. This tran...
2 comments
Read more

How Total Station Works

WHAT IS A TOTAL STATION? Theodolite A  theodolite   / θ iː ˈ ɒ d ə l aɪ t /  is a precision instrument for measuring  angles  in the horizontal and vertical planes. Theodolites are used mainly for  surveying  applications, and have been adapted for specialized purposes such as  meteorology  and  rocket launch . [1] A modern theodolite consists of a movable  telescope  mounted within two perpendicular  axes : the horizontal or  trunnion  axis and the  zenith axis. A theodolite measures vertical angles as angles between the zenith, forwards or plunged—typically approximately 90 and 270  degrees . When the telescope is pointed at a target object, the angle of each of these axes can be measured with great precision, typically to  milliradian  or  seconds of arc . A theodolite may be either transit or non-transit. In a transit theodolite, the telescope can be inverted in the v...
Post a Comment
Read more