Optical fiber principle and application

Definition of Fiber

Optical fiber, short for optical fiber, is a fiber made of glass or plastic that acts as a light-transmitting tool.

The tiny fiber is encased in a plastic jacket that allows it to bend without breaking. Typically, a transmitter at one end of the fiber uses a light-emitting diode or a laser to transmit light pulses to the fiber, and a receiver at the other end of the fiber detects the pulses using a photosensitive element.

ZR Cable fiber

The discovery of optical fibers

How much do you know about fiber

One day in 1870, the British physicist Tyndall went to the lecture hall of the Royal Society to talk about the principle of total reflection of light. He made a simple experiment: drill a hole in a wooden barrel filled with water, and then use a lamp to put the light from the top of the barrel. Water illuminates. The results surprised the audience. People saw that the light water flowed out from the small hole in the bucket, the water was bent, and the light was bent, and the light was actually captured by the bent water.

It has been found that light travels along a fine stream of wine spewed from a barrel; it has also been found that light travels along a curved glass rod. Why is this? Is the light no longer going straight? These phenomena caught Tyndall's attention. After his research, he found that this is the effect of total reflection of light, because the density of medium such as water is higher than that of surrounding matter (such as air). ) is large, that is, the light shoots from the water to the air. When the incident angle is greater than a certain angle, the refracted light disappears, and all the light is reflected back to the water. On the surface, the light appears to be bending forward in the current.

Later, people created a kind of glass fiber with high transparency and thickness like spider silk-glass fiber. When the light enters the glass fiber at a suitable angle, the light travels along the curved glass fiber. Since this fiber can be used to transmit light, it is called an optical fiber.

Fiber Applications

communication application

Communication using optical fibers is called optical fiber communication. A pair of fiber-optic fibers as thin as spider silk can connect 10 billion telephone lines at the same time! It takes about 500 tons of copper to lay 1,000 kilometers of coaxial cable, and it only takes a few kilograms of quartz to switch to fiber-optic communication. The sand contains quartz, which is almost inexhaustible.

medical applications

Fiberoptic endoscopes can be introduced into the heart and ventricles to measure blood pressure in the heart, oxygen saturation in the blood, body temperature, etc. The laser scalpel connected with optical fiber has been used clinically and can be used as a photosensitive method to treat cancer. In addition, endoscopes made of optical fibers can help doctors to check diseases of the stomach, esophagus, duodenum, etc.

sensor application

Optical fibers can send sunlight to all corners and can also be mechanically processed. Computers, robots, automotive switchboards, etc. have also successfully used optical fibers to transmit light sources or images.

Downhole Detection Technology

Downhole system suppliers predict that oil recovery can be increased to 50% to 60% by utilizing smart well technology. Sensor technology is increasingly shifting from other industries to offshore and downhole, especially fiber optic sensor technology, which greatly improves the reliability of high temperature systems.