Fiber Optic Cable Types

Talk about data communication, Internet and the thing that comes to mind is fiber optic cables. These cables encode data as pulses of light, instead of pulses of electricity. This fiber optics technology has revolutionized data transfer as never before. Fiber optic cables have easily beaten their copper counterparts as regards to their data densities. These cables are the reason, why our emails and photographs are sent to our loved ones thousands of miles away in a jiffy.

Now what is that makes these cables the top-notch in case of data transmission? Well, let's check out first what is the design of these cables which make them so amazing.

Fiber Optic Cable Design

In extensively used and practical fibers, the facing or the covering is normally coated using a tough, resin, buffer layer. Buffer refers to a component which holds one or more optical fibers for functions like mechanical isolation, fiber identification and prevention from damage. Now, this buffer layer may further be surrounded by jacket layer of plastic. However, these layers add strength to the fiber but do not contribute to its optical wave guide properties. For indoor applications, fiber which is jacketed is generally wrapped in a bundle of flexible fibrous polymer strength members like Aramid in the form of a lightweight plastic encasing to form a simple cable. The end of each cable is terminated using a specialized optical fiber connector. These fiber connectors are spring loaded and align, and couple the cores of fibers for the light to pass. These optical fiber connectors enable the ends of the cable to be easily connected and disconnected from transmitting and receiving equipment.

New Age cables are available in a wide variety of sheathings and armor, meant for direct trench burial, lashing to aerial telephone poles, submarine installation, installation in conduit, dual use as power lines and finally insertion in paved streets. Here are the different types of fiber optic cables.

Types of Fiber Optic Cable

Single Mode Fiber
Single-mode fibers are made up of a narrower core and allow a single data stream or mode to be transmitted over considerably long distances. In a narrower spectral width, a single mode fiber carries far more bandwidth, as compared to multi-mode fiber.

Multi-Mode Fiber
In comparison to single mode fiber, multi-mode fiber strands have a much thicker core. Multi-mode fiber allows multiple data streams to be transmitted over a single optical fiber by carrying data encoded, employing multiple light resources. However, the distance and available data bandwidth is a kind of drawback in multi-mode fiber. Multi-mode fiber is excellent for shorter distances, but is not compatible with the high bandwidth of single-mode fibers. This is used in backbone applications in buildings.

Plastic Fiber
Plastic Optical Fiber (POF), generally do not have the quality and optical purity that is needed for reliable data transmission. This makes them unfit for data transmission. These are mostly used for decorative and aesthetic transmission of light. POF has an edge over glass fiber, when it comes to entertainment and aesthetics on account of its cost and durability.

In all this, the jacket or the covering for the optical fiber, as mentioned earlier, has color codes so that the type of these aforementioned fiber used, can be identified. The standard color code for single-mode optical fiber is yellow and for multi-mode optical fiber is orange.

That was all about the types of fiber optic cables and their set-up. Now we know how our emails and calls and the likes are connected and reach the desired people!