1. Fiber Optic Transmission SL/HL – Option C.3

2. Reflection/Refraction Reflection – A wave encounters a boundary between two mediums and cannot pass through – The angle of incidence is always equal to the angle of reflection Refraction – When a wave passes through boundary into a new medium its speed changes – The wave will change directions based on the change in its speed

3. Refraction If the wave speeds up it will bend away from the normal line If the wave slows down it will bend towards the normal line Snell’s Law

4. Critical Angle When traveling into air from some medium, light will always speed up, thus increasing the angle – If it speeds up enough, the angle of refraction will be 90 degrees This means that the refracted ray will travel along the edge of the boundary

5. Critical Angle When light strikes the boundary at the critical angle or greater, the wave is totally reflected back into the first medium Here n1 is the index of refraction of the medium the light starts in

6. Total Internal Reflection Usually when a wave reaches a boundary between mediums it is partially reflected and partially refracted – When the critical angle is exceeded the entire wave is reflected back within the medium – The wave doesn’t lose any energy

7. Optical Fiber Fiber optic cable is made of thin, clear glass or plastic Once light enters the cable it is totally internally reflected until it reaches the far end – Actual optical fiber is step indexed There is another layer between the core and the outside This is so the fibers can be bundled together

8. Dispersion Modal – Not all the waves that enter make it to the other end, only certain ones – The possible paths are called modes Material – Because different frequencies have different refractive indices, they have different paths These can both cause problems if the bits of data arrive out of order More direct modes are faster Laser light and single mode cable reduce these effects

9. Material Dispersion

10. Attenuation Attenuation is the opposite of amplification – As a signal travels through a cable it will slowly lose intensity as energy is lost – Attenuation is measured in decibels (dB) The 10 at the beginning is to convert to decibels Generally measured in dBkm -1

11. Wavelength/Attenuation

12. Noise One advantage to using fiber optics is that it is not particularly susceptible to noise – Any noise that does occur is generally due to random light entering the end of the cable – The power ratio of noise to signal in fiber optics is generally in the range of 10 -17 or 10 -18

13. Reshapers Monomode fibers can eliminate modal dispersion and lasers cut down on material dispersion, but it is not completely eliminated – Over a long distance individual pulses can start to overlap each other – Every 40-60km is a reshaper which will detect and reshape the signal Has its own laser which sends a ‘new’ signal

14. Amplifiers Even with reshaping, signals still attenuate over the length of the cable – Amplifiers along the cable increase the signal strength to keep it going