Optical-fiber Communication

1. What is optical communication?

Modern optical communication is enabled by transmitting an encoded optical signal using a light source such as a VCSEL and receiving it at the other end using a photodetector, at which point it is decoded for information transmission. Optical fiber is the prevalent means of forming a link for the optical transmission.

2. How does optical communication work?

A fiber optic communication link is comprised of a transceiver at each end of a fiber cable of a desired length. The transmitter part of the transceiver encodes and transmits the light signal through the fiber optic cable while the receiver part of the transceiver receives the light signal and decodes it into an electrical signal.

For lower data rate, the optical signal is modulated as an NRZ signal but for higher data rate, typically over 25 Gbps, PAM4 modulation is used. The performances of the whole link and its individual components are evaluated based on various parameters such as the optical eye, the bit error rate (BER), small signal and large signal performance. Power dissipation is also a key performance parameter. In addition, the optical communication components are to be compliant to specific standards.

3. What are applications and advantages of fiber optic communication?

Telecommunication over optical fiber offers secure, high-quality and cost-effective means of transferring massive volumes of data over short and long distances. Inside data centers fiber optic communication is used to transfer data between storage, to servers, switches and routers. Moreover, the explosive growth in services for the end users such as high speed Internet, HD cable television, streaming video services, live video conferences, tele-medicine and remote work is made possible by lasers and photodiodes.

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