Optical Fiber is a transmission line or a kind of cable
The development of current optical fiber technology, has been able to produce attenuation of less than 20 decibels (dB) / km. With a large bandwidth (bandwidth) so that the ability to transmit data into more and faster than the use of conventional cables. Thus, optical fibers are particularly suitable for use in telecommunication system applications. In principle, optical fiber reflects and refracts the amount of light that travels within it.
The efficiency of the optical fiber is determined by the purity of the glass / glass composer. The purer the glass material, the less light is absorbed by the optical fiber.
History Fiber Optic Cable
The use of light as a carrier of information has actually been widely used since ancient times, just around the 1930s German scientists began experimenting to transmit light through materials called fiber optics. This experiment is also still quite primitive because the results achieved can not be directly utilized, but must go through further development and refinement. A further development was when British scientists in 1958 proposed a prototype of optical fibers that have been used today, consisting of glass core wrapped by other glasses. Around the early 1960s a fantastic change took place in Asia when Japanese scientists managed to create a type of optical fiber capable of transmitting images.
At first laser-generating equipment is still large and troublesome. Besides being inefficient, it can only function at very low temperatures. The laser also has not radiated straight. In very bright light conditions too, the jets easily twist to follow the density of the atmosphere. At that time, a laser beam within a distance of 1 km, can arrive at the final destination at many points with a distance deviation up to a meter count.
Around the early 60's there was an extremely high purity optical fiber, less than 1 part in a million. In ordinary language it means that the very clear and non-conducting fibers are so pure, so it is said that if the seawater was as pure as the optical fiber, with enough normal eye lighting would be able to watch the inhabitants of the Pacific Ocean basin.
Like lasers, optical fibers must go through the early developmental stages. As the light transmission medium, it is very inefficient. Until 1968 or two years after the first optical fiber was predicted to be a light guide, the rate of attenuation (loss) was still 20 dB / km. Through development in material technology, optical fibers undergo refining, dehydran and others. Slowly but surely the attenuation reaches a level below 1 dB / km.
Chronology of Optical Fiber Development
1917 Albert Einstein introduces a stimulated stimulation theory where if there are atoms in high energy levels
1958 Charles Townes and physicist Arthur Schawlow publish his research showing that masers can be made to operate in infrared and visible regions, and explain the concept of lasers.
1960 Research Laboratories Bell and Ali Javan and colleagues William Bennett, Jr., and Donald Herriott discovered a continuous operation of the helium-neon laser.
1960 Theodore Maiman, an electronics physicist and engineer from Hughes Research Laboratories, invented the laser source using a synthetic ruby crystals as a medium.
