Introduction to optical systems
Optical fiber is the most common type of channel for optical communications. The transmitters in optical fiber links are generally light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or laser diodes. Infrared light, rather than visible light is used more commonly because optical fibers transmit infrared wavelengths with less attenuation and dispersion. The signal encoding is typically simple intensity modulation, although historically optical phase and frequency modulation have been demonstrated in the lab. The need for periodic signal regeneration was largely superseded by the introduction of the erbium-doped fiber amplifier, which extended link distances at a significantly lower cost.
How does light carry data?
Advantages of optical communications
- Long Distance Transmission & Economic and Energy-saving
- Large-capacity Information Transmission at One Time
- With High-speed Transmission Rate
In current society, more industries can hardly work without optical communication, especially the IT industry, communication industry, and so on. Meanwhile, the communication tech is always keeping improved and keeping pace with the market demands, in which the fiber optical communication is widely used among these optical communications.
Optical fiber communication: It is a kind of wired communication. The lightwave transmits along with the optical fiber. The light source can be a laser (also called a semiconductor laser diode) or a light-emitting diode. Optical fiber communication, which is with low transmission attenuation, large capacity, good confidentiality and is free from external interference, can be used in large capacity defense trunk communication and field operation communication.
Although we do use other types of optical communications the fiber is most widely used and adopted. Other options include:
- Atmospheric laser communications
- Blue-green light communication
- Infrared communication
- Ultraviolet communication
