http://www.articlealley.com en-us editorial@articlealley.com Bit error ratio (BER) measurement is the fundamental measurement of the quality of the fiber optic communication system. It measures the system's probability that transmitted bits will be correctly received as logic ones and zeros. Bit error ratio is t... http://www.articlealley.com/article_570023_10.html 05th July 2008 What are fiber optic sensors? The fundamental characteristic of all fiber optic sensors is that they depend on some optical properties, such as intensity, phase, state of polarization and wavelength, to be modulated by measurands. Measurands cou... http://www.articlealley.com/article_570017_10.html 05th July 2008 What happens if a major fiber optic cable is cut or a major hubbing location is destroyed in a fiber network? Will the whole system be brought down? That is the subject of this article: the survivability of a well designed fiber network. Modern fibe... http://www.articlealley.com/article_570011_10.html 05th July 2008 The structure of an optical receiver is simple: consisting of just a photodiode to produce the electrical current and an amplifier. But do not be fooled: it is far more complex to design a really high performance optical receiver. So we will talk about so... http://www.articlealley.com/article_570009_10.html 05th July 2008 In the last decade, a wide variety of applications have been developed that covers a dozen of datacom networking technologies. The transmission speed ranges from 10Mbits up to 10Gbit/s and growing. High distance-bandwidth product is the major selling p... http://www.articlealley.com/article_569974_45.html 05th July 2008 Do you know why it is so expensive to install Fiber To The Home? Why Bell companies are reluctant to deploy fiber optic network directly to consumers in a large scale? It's not the material cost. It's the labor! The introduction of fiber into the subsc... http://www.articlealley.com/article_569966_10.html 05th July 2008 The History of Traditional PSTN The traditional PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) has been continuously improving since its inception by Alexander Bell. There are valid reasons why PSTN exists in its current state. What is Ring-Down... http://www.articlealley.com/article_559180_10.html 20th June 2008 Understanding FTTH (Fiber To The Home) FTTH is an all-fiber connection to the home which provides a minimum of 155Mbps bandwidth on both up stream and down stream directions. Basically, it is composed of a fiber from the service node to the opti... http://www.articlealley.com/article_559176_10.html 20th June 2008 Why Do We Need Fiber Optic Attenuators? A fiber optic attenuator, also called an optical attenuator, simulates the loss the would be caused by a long length of fiber. Typically, this device performs receiver testing. While an optical attenuator ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_559170_10.html 20th June 2008 Why do we need fiber optic isolator? Light can be reflected back and forth. This is also true in fiber optic communication networks. But in fiber optic networks, most of the reflections are harmful to the stability of the system which is especia... http://www.articlealley.com/article_559169_10.html 20th June 2008 What is an optical circulator? The optical circulator has similar function and design as the optical isolator. An optical circulator is an nonreciprocal passive device that directs light sequentially from port 1 to port 2, from port 2 to port 3,... http://www.articlealley.com/article_559166_10.html 20th June 2008 What is all-optical switching? All-optical switching is a process by which light, usually in the form of digital communication signals, is routed from one transmission channel to another, or modulated, without intermediate conversion to another ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_559161_10.html 20th June 2008 When testing loss in a fiber optic link, some basic principles must be kept in mind all the time. 1.The testing wavelength should always be the same as the working wavelength. Because optical fiber loss varies with light wavelength, you will get incorr... http://www.articlealley.com/article_555859_10.html 13th June 2008 What is WDM? WDM is the abbreviation for Wavelength Division Multiplexing. What it does is to split the the light in an optic fiber into a number of discrete wavelengths (colors). Each wavelength (color) is a independent channel running at data rate at... http://www.articlealley.com/article_555851_10.html 13th June 2008 The SONET standards were developed in the mid-1980s to take advantage of low-cost transmission over optical fibers. It defines a hierarchy of data rates, formats for framing and multiplexing the payload data, as well as optical signal specifications(wavel... http://www.articlealley.com/article_555189_45.html 11th June 2008 The standards for ATM were first developed in the mid 1980s. The goal was to design a single networking strategy that could transport real-time video and audio as well as image files, text and email. ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) has been proposed a... http://www.articlealley.com/article_555186_10.html 11th June 2008 Overview of Fiber Optic Testing There are mandatory tests for every stage of the design, manufacture, and installation of the fiber optic components, link, cable plant, and network. Most fiber optic test procedures have been thoroughly tested and co... http://www.articlealley.com/article_555181_10.html 11th June 2008 How Does an OTDR Work? In fiber optic networks, OTDR (Optical Time Domain Reflectometer) is an opto-electronic instrument used to characterize an optical fiber. OTDR is both the best known and least understood fiber optic instrument. OTDR does not m... http://www.articlealley.com/article_555172_10.html 11th June 2008 There is no question that fiber optic communication is our future. Fiber optic communication industry has been enjoying amazing growth for over 15 years. These are driven by both technology advance and market demand. There are some obvious trends in the d... http://www.articlealley.com/article_555168_10.html 11th June 2008 :: Environment requirement on outdoor fiber optic cables Outdoor fiber cables must endure harsh environment factors such as UV radiation from sunlight, storms, snows and 80 mph wind, so outdoor cables must be strong, weatherproof and UV resistant. The ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_542635_10.html 21st May 2008 :: 1. What is the difference between copper cable and fiber optic cable? Even though fiber optic cables may look like traditional copper cables, we should always keep in mind that inside fiber cables are fragile glass fibers which can be broken easily ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_540364_10.html 20th May 2008 Just like copper cables, NEC (National Electrical Code) requires indoor fiber optic cables be marked with their fire and smoking ratings. NEC requires all indoor fiber cables be marked correctly and installed properly for its intended use. According to... http://www.articlealley.com/article_540363_10.html 20th May 2008 :: The need for fiber optic couplers We use electronic couplers all the time: such as a telephone coupler which lets you connect both a telephone and a fax machine to the same telephone line. Or a CATV coupler which lets you connect several TV s... http://www.articlealley.com/article_535408_10.html 11th May 2008 :: Why do we need optical fiber amplifiers? Basically what the optical fiber amplifiers solve is the traditional distance problem as in any long distance telecommunication system such as a trans-Atlantic link. As optical signals travel through t... http://www.articlealley.com/article_534551_10.html 11th May 2008 :: What is fiber splicing? Lights travel in optical fibers need a continuous, non-disruptive path in order to travel a long distance without too big signal loss. But in a hundreds of kilometers fiber link, the light signals need to be amplified, cross-... http://www.articlealley.com/article_513252_10.html 09th April 2008 The purpose of this article is to show you the available options for termination a fiber optic cable installation project. I will compare the pros and cons of different termination approaches. Fiber optic cable termination can be divided into two major... http://www.articlealley.com/article_511719_10.html 07th April 2008 You can find many different fiber optic test equipment from major manufacturers such as fluke, Noyes, JDSU and many other suppliers. I will cover the ones you will most likely encounter in general service, installation and operation. The basic fiber op... http://www.articlealley.com/article_510976_10.html 07th April 2008 Fiber optic cable installation is a very special task that only trained professionals can do it quickly and correctly. This is determined by fiber's fragile structure and highly sensitive to microbending and macrobending loss. However, most of the tech... http://www.articlealley.com/article_510061_10.html 07th April 2008 :: What is dispersion in optical fibers? Dispersion is the fact that light pulses spread out while they travel along a fiber. This fact occurs because the speed of light in the fiber depends on its wavelength (color of the light) and the propagation mo... http://www.articlealley.com/article_508903_45.html 04th April 2008 :: What is polarization? Light waves consist of oscillating electric and magnetic fields. These two fields are perpendicular to each other and to the direction of light traveling. We call the electric field plane as the light's polarization. Sunligh... http://www.articlealley.com/article_507975_10.html 03rd April 2008 What is the most time consuming work in building a fiber network Two works are usually the largest line items in an fiber optic network installation budget: pulling the fiber optic cables and terminating or splicing the cables. When pulling t... http://www.articlealley.com/article_479280_10.html 22nd February 2008 What is a loopback test? A loopback test is a hardware or software method which feeds a received signal or data back to the sender. It is used as an aid in debugging physical connection problems. Fiber optic transceiver loopback test ... http://www.articlealley.com/article_478409_10.html 21st February 2008 What are fiber optic patch cables? Fiber optic patch cable is a fiber optic cable terminated with fiber optic connectors on both ends. It has two major application areas: computer work station to outlet and fiber optic patch panels or optical cross con... http://www.articlealley.com/article_478280_10.html 21st February 2008