Optical fiber is a long thin, cylindrical fiber made of plastic or glass, as tiny as one tenth of a human hair. A standard telecom optical fiber comprises three cylindrical layers, counted from the inside out as fiber core (diameter 8~10um), the cladding (diameter 130um) and buffer coating (diameter 90um).
Fiber core and cladding is composed of silica or glass. The fiber core and the cladding layers are used to keep the light inside the core without losing. Fiber buffer coating is made out of plastic or acrylic, رقم اس تي سي الياف and provides handling flexibility and physical protection to the fiber.
Optic fibers make use of an optical phenomenon known as internal reflection. When light is introduced into the fiber from its end face, it is kept inside the core not leaking out and losing its energy.
Then light is digitally modulated to show the numbers 1 and 0 as a computer. As such, data can be transmitted from one place to another, which could be located from San Francisco all the way to New York.
What are fiber optic connectors ? And how do they work?
You now know how optical fibers operate. So what exactly is a fiber optic connector and what’s its function in a fiber optic telecommunication network?
Simply put, a fiber optic connector’s function is just like an electric power plug, it connects light from one part of optical fiber to another segment of optical fiber.
Since optical fibers are tiny they require fiber optic connectors to be constructed with high precision, and at a size that is 0.1um which is one hundredth of the human hair.
Fiber optic connectors connect two fibers from end to end to ensure that light is able to travel from one fiber into another without bouncing off the connector and losing its signal.
Additionally fiber optic connectors, they provide cross connect flexibility to the telecommunication network. Thus, a complex computer network can be modularized and simple to manage.
Just like any other connectors that are used in electric industry, electronic industry and computer industry, numerous kinds and types of connectors for fiber optics were invented during the evolution of the fiber optic communication industry. Some of them once were highly popular in the market but they have since been used for a variety of purposes, but are now disappearing.
The most well-known fiber optic connectors that are used today comprise SC, ST, LC, FC, MTRJ, SMA and a few others that are less well-known. You will surely see new connectors being developed as a result of the development of the industry.