Optical fiber is a long thin cylindrical fiber made from glass or plastic, smaller than one tenth of the human hair. The standard optical fiber in telecom comprises three cylindrical layers, counted from the inside out: fiber core (diameter 8x10um), cladding (diameter 130um) along with buffer coating (diameter 9000um).
Fiber core and cladding is made from glass or silica. Fiber Core and Cladding layers are used to keep the light within the core, without leakage. Fiber buffer coating is made out of plastic or acrylic, and offers handling flexibility as well as physical protection for the fiber.
Fiber optics employ an optical phenomenon known as total internal reflection. When light is introduced into the fiber from its end face, it is kept inside the core without spilling out and losing its energy.
Then, light is digitally modulated to show 1 and 0 , just as a computer. As such, information can be carried from one location to another site which may be from San Francisco all the way to New York.
What are fiber optic connectors ? And what do they do?
Now you know how optical fibers work. What is the fiber optic connector? And what’s its function in a fiber optic telecommunication network?
Simply put, a fiber optic connector’s function is similar to an electric power supply, it relies on light to transmit from one segment of optical fiber to another segment that is optical.
Because optical fibers are tiny, fiber optic connectors have to be constructed with high precision, and at a scale to 0.1um that is just one centimeter of a human hair.
Fiber optic connectors are positioned to align two fibers from end to end in a way that light can be transferred from one fiber to another without bouncing off the interface , and thus losing its signal.
Besides fiber optic connectors, they provide cross connect flexibility for the telecommunications network. Therefore, a computer network that is complex could be made modular and simple to manage.
Just like any other connectors used in electronic industry, the electric industry, and computer industry, numerous types of fiber optic connectors were created along the development of fiber optic communication. Some of them once were extremely popular in the field and now have served their purpose and are fading away.
The most popular fiber optic connectors that are used today are SC, ST, Abdulibrahim.com/dir/site-7873.html (resource for this article) LC, FC, MTRJ, SMA as well as a few other less popular ones. There are certain to be new connectors developed with the advancement of technology.