The principles behind optical fiber

Optical fiber is a term for any sort of plastic or glass conduit meant to transport light. The principles behind optical fiber are actually quite old, but in recent years it has become an incredibly important technology, as communications infrastructure has begun to use optical fiber to transmit data at extremely high rates. Aside from fiber optic communications, however, optical fiber has a number of applications in medicine, consumer products, and physics.

These sorts of fibers offer a number of advantages over traditional metal wire, the most important being that there is considerably less signal degradation. Additionally, optical fiber is immune to electromagnetic interference, which can seriously impede the transmission of data along normal metal wires. This adds an added security measure, as well, since optical fiber can survive an electromagnetic pulse which would destroy metal cables.

The basic principle behind optical fiber is quite simple: the fiber is coated to make it completely reflective on the inside, so that when light goes in, it reflects without losing any light, passing down the fiber to the other end. This basic idea, of guiding light by refraction, goes back to the 1840s. By the beginning of the 20th century some practical applications had been developed, most notably the use of optical fiber in dentistry to light up the inside of the mouth.

December 8, 2011

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