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Definition: optical fibers for use in optical fiber communications
Telecom fibers are optical fibers which are used in optical fiber communications. Mainly the following types of telecom fibers are used:
- Fused silica single-mode fibers with very low losses (e.g. 0.2 dB/km) are used for long-haul data transmission (tens or hundreds of kilometers) with very high transmission capacity.
- Fused silica multimode fibers are suitable for shorter distances of e.g. hundreds of meters (e.g. within storage area networks): they are less critical to handle, essentially due to much larger core areas, but intermodal dispersion limits the transmission distance.
- Plastic optical fibers (also multimode), typically made of PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate, also called acrylic), represent the cheapest solution for short-range data transmission, e.g. in home networks.
A standard single-mode telecom fiber for the 1.3- or 1.5-μm wavelength region is the SMF-28 of Corning, and there is the enhanced version SMF-28e. The mode field diameter is ∼ 9.2 μm at 1310 nm (effective mode area = 67 μm2), or 10.4 μm at 1550 nm (85 μm2). The single-mode cut-off is at 1260 nm. The Lucent AllWave and the Alcatel ColorLock fibers have quite similar properties.
Other telecom fibers have somewhat modified properties, making them more suitable in certain areas:
- Corning offers Vascade fibers in different versions, e.g. the Vascade L1000 with an increased effective mode area, the non-zero dispersion-shifted Vascade LS+, and the Vascade LEAF fiber, a dispersion-shifted fiber with increased mode area.
- Lucent offers different versions of their TrueWave fiber, e.g. the TrueWave-RS with reduced dispersion slope and the TrueWave-XL with larger mode area.
- Alcatel developed the TeraLight fiber, another non-zero dispersion-shifted fiber. (Alcatel has later merged with Lucent to form the company Alcatel-Lucent.)
ITU Standards for Telecom Fibers
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has developed a number of standards for various types of fibers as used for optical fiber communications. Some of the most important of those standards are listed in Table 1.
Table 1: Important ITU standards concerning telecom fibers.
| Name | Title |
|---|---|
| G.650.1 (06/04) | Definitions and test methods for linear, deterministic attributes of single-mode fibre and cable |
| G.651 (02/98) | Characteristics of a 50/125 μm multimode graded index optical fibre cable |
| G.651.1 (07/07) | Characteristics of a 50/125 μm multimode graded index optical fibre cable for the optical access network (pre-published) |
| G.652 (06/05) | Characteristics of a single-mode optical fibre and cable |
| G.653 (12/06) | Characteristics of a dispersion-shifted single-mode optical fibre and cable |
| G.654 (12/06) | Characteristics of a cut-off shifted single-mode optical fibre and cable |
| G.655 (03/06) | Characteristics of a non-zero dispersion-shifted single-mode optical fibre and cable |
| G.656 (12/06) | Characteristics of a fibre and cable with non-zero dispersion for wideband optical transport |
| G.657 (12/06) | Characteristics of a bending loss insensitive single mode optical fibre and cable for the access network |
Bibliography
| [1] | W. A. Gambling, “The rise and rise of optical fibers”, IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 6 (6), 1084 (2000) (an informative review on the development of glass fibers for telecom applications) |
| [2] | Standards of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), see http://www.itu.int/ |
See also: fibers, single-mode fibers, multimode fibers, silica fibers, optical fiber communications
Categories: communications, fibers and other waveguides
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