What is fiber optics?
Fiber optics, or optical fiber, refers to the technology that transmits information as light pulses along a glass or plastic fiber.
A fiber optic cable can contain a varying number of these glass fibers — from a few up to a couple hundred. Another glass layer, called cladding, surrounds the glass fiber core. The buffer tube layer protects the cladding, and a jacket layer acts as the final protective layer for the individual strand.
Fiber optic cables are commonly used because of their advantages over copper cables. Some of those benefits include higher bandwidth and transmit speeds.
Fiber optics is used for long-distance and high-performance data networking. It is also commonly used in telecommunication services, such as internet, television and telephones. For example, Verizon and Google use fiber optics in their Verizon FIOS and Google Fiber services, respectively, providing Gigabit internet speeds to users.
How fiber optics works
Fiber optics transmit data in the form of light particles — or photons — that pulse through a fiber optic cable. The glass fiber core and the cladding each have a different refractive index that bends incoming light at a certain angle.
When light signals are sent through the fiber optic cable, they reflect off the core and cladding in a series of zig-zag bounces, following a process called total internal reflection. The light signals do not travel at the speed of light because of the denser glass layers, instead traveling about 30% slower than the speed of light.
To renew, or boost, the signal throughout its journey, fiber optics transmission sometimes requires repeaters at distant intervals. These repeaters regenerate the optical signal by converting it to an electrical signal, processing that electrical signal and retransmitting the optical signal.
Fiber optic cables are now able to support up to 10 Gbps signals. Typically, as the bandwidth capacity of a fiber optic cable increases, the more expensive it becomes.
The objective of the project is to connect 56 communication sites to each other and operate them through a FO cable.