How does fiber optics work? What is the difference between fiber optic cables?
Optical fiber is the abbreviation of optical fiber, which is a fiber made of glass or plastic. So, you must have never understood what the working principle of optical fiber is and what is the difference between optical fiber and cable! Let’s talk about it in detail below.
How does fiber optics work?
If the Internet is compared to the information highway, the optical cable is like the cornerstone of the highway, so how does the large-capacity information optical cable transmit at high speed and long distance?
At the transmitting end, the information to be transmitted (such as voice) is first converted into an electrical signal, and then transmitted to the laser beam through a laser. The intensity of the light will change with the frequency of the electrical signal, and it will be emitted through an optical fiber. At the receiving end, the detection After receiving the optical signal, the device converts it into an electrical signal, and restores the original information after processing.
The optical fiber made of glass fiber inside the optical fiber can transmit optical signals to thousands of kilometers away, and combine hundreds of thousands of optical fibers to make an optical cable like a cable, which not only improves the strength of the optical fiber , and greatly increased the communication capacity.
The propagation speed of light in different substances is different, so when shooting from one substance to another substance, refraction and reflection will occur at the junction of the two substances, and the angle of the refracted light will change with the angle of the incident light. However, when the angle of the incident light reaches or exceeds a certain angle, the refracted light will disappear, and all the incident light will be reflected back, which is the total reflection of light.
The optical signal is transmitted to the end point after repeated refraction in the fiber. The optical signal will be scattered or attenuated after repeated refraction, and the optical signal needs to be amplified every 50 kilometers.
What is the difference between fiber optic cables？
As I said so much before, it’s a bit confusing to see the optical fiber and the optical cable for a while. What is the difference between them?
The optical cable is composed of a certain number of optical fibers, which are wrapped with a sheath and a protective layer, which are used for communication and long-distance large-capacity information transmission.
Optical fiber is a transmission tool, just like a thin plastic wire. The very thin optical fiber will be encapsulated in a plastic sleeve and used for long-distance information transmission. So fiber optic cables contain optical fibers.
Finally, let’s talk about a cable. The cable is composed of a conductive core, an insulating layer, and a sealing protective layer. It is made of metal materials (mostly copper, aluminum) as conductors, and is used to transmit power or information. Wires are twisted, and cables are mostly used in transportation hubs, substations and other places. In fact, there is no strict boundary between wires and cables. Usually we call those with small diameter and few cells as wires, and those with large diameter, many cells and complex structure as cables.
The above is all about the working principle of optical fiber and the difference between optical fiber and cable. With the development of 5G technology, it uses next-generation cellular technology, using microwave transmission, with fast speed and large coverage, and 5G download speed is as high as 10Gbps compared to The current 1000 megabit optical fiber is faster. With the reduction of 5G commercial network costs, some people predict that 5G will not only eliminate WIFI but also eliminate optical fibers with faster transmission speeds. What do you think?
