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Optical Fibre Media

Physically an optical fibre consists of a glass core, plastic or glass cladding and a protective coating.

Fibre optic cables are similar to coax, except without the braid. As it can be seen in the figure- at the center is the glass are through which light propagates. In multimode fibres, the core is 50 microns in diameter, about the thickness of a human hair. In a single- mode fibres the core is 8 to 10 microns.

The core is surrounded by a glass cladding with a lower index of refraction than the core, to keep all the light in the core. Next comes a thin plastic jacket to protect the cladding. Optical fibres are typically grouped together in bundles, protected by an outer sheath.

Terrestrial fibre sheaths are normally laid in the ground within a meter of the surface, where they are occasionally subject to attacks by backhole or gophers. Near the shore, transoceanic fibre sheaths are buried in trenches by a kind of seaplow. In deep water they just lie on the bottom, where they can be inagged by fishing travelers or eaten by sharks.

Light is propagated along an optical fibre as a set of guided light waves called the modes of the optical fibres. Two kinds of light sources can be used to do the signaling, LEDs and semiconductor lasers. Optical fibre cable can conduct high pulses generated by lasers at transmission rates as high as 2 billion bits per second. This about 10 times greater than coaxial cable media and about 200 times better than twisted- pair wires.

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