Fiber Optic Tutorials

This is a continuation from the previous tutorial - Liquid-Core Optical Fibers     1. INTRODUCTION This tutorial describes the polymer optical fiber \(\text{(POF)}\), probably one of the fiber types with the highest loss and the smallest bandwidth. Nevertheless, it is the only optical fiber that can be installed by everyone without any special tool. That is why the potential of \(\text{POF}\) systems is very high.     2. POF BASICS  The first \(\text{POFs}\) were manufactured by DuPont as early as the late 1960s. Because of the incomplete purification of the source materials used, optical attenuation values remained in the vicinity of 1000 dB/km. During...

This is a continuation from the previous tutorial - Beam perturbation and diffraction The simplest kind of optical resonator consists of just two curved mirrors set up facing each other. If the curvatures of these two mirrors correspond to a stable periodic focusing system, and if their transverse dimensions are large enough so that we can neglect edge-diffraction effects, then these mirrors can in essence trap a set of lowest-order and higher-order gaussian modes or beams that will bounce back and forth between the two mirrors. These trapped Hermite-gaussian modes form, to a first approximation, a set of resonant modes...

This is continuation from the previous tutorial - Physical properties of gaussian beams     1. INTRODUCTION Optical interferometers have made feasible a variety of precision measurements using the interference phenomena produced by light waves. After a brief survey of the basic types of interferometers, this article will describe some of the interferometers that can be used for such applications as measurements of lengths and small changes in length; optical testing; studies of surface structure; measurements of the pressure and temperature distribution in gas flows and plasmas; measurements of particle velocities and vibration amplitudes; rotating sensing; measurements of temperature, pressure, and electric...

This is a continuation from the previous tutorial - Optical performance monitoring for fiber-optic communication networks     1. INTRODUCTION Fiber optical systems are nowpresent in multiple segments of the network, as depicted in Figure 1. The segments are derived from different requirements and functionalities associated with each segment. This leads to a plurality of technology selections; for instance, the core segment relies on the coherent transponder technology while the access segment with passive optical networks \(\text{(PONs)}\) uses low-cost transponders with noncoherent detection.  Though different technologies are used, each segment faces the need of high-capacity networks in order to support the...

This is a continuation from the previous tutorial - Tapered Fibers and Specialty Fiber Microcomponents     1. INTRODUCTION It is widely recognized that the need for larger bandwidths for communication systems was the main driving force for the development of optical fibers. The invention of the laser in 1960 triggered great expectations regarding the possibility of increasing the amount of information carried by a modulated wave using an optical signal. Simultaneously, it was acknowledged that a suitable transmission medium was needed so that optical signals could propagate over long distances with minimum losses. Today several technological barriers have been broken, leading...