How Optical Fibers Have Transformed Modern Telecommunications

In the 1970s, it was determined that if optical transmission could achieve less than 20 dB/km, this solution could replace copper wire in the telecommunications market. And it did! Today, optical fiber has dethroned copper wire for its transmission performance, but it has also far surpassed the potential expansion of telecommunications networks. Transmission distance without repeaters, weight reduction, and the amount of information that can be transmitted are just a few examples where optical fiber has outperformed copper wires.

If optical fibers are found in various sectors, such as medical applications, lidars, lasers in the manufacturing field, and more, the telecommunications market remains by far the most the important market.

To meet demand, companies are continuously innovating to increase bandwidth on current networks to meet users’ desires for more data, delivered faster.

Coractive’s optical fibers for telecommunications are primarily used by our clients in three applications:

Amplifiers
Optical components
Attenuators

Active Fibers

Active fibers are primarily found in fiber lasers and amplifiers. Here are some examples of their uses in the telecommunications market:

Erbium (Er) Fibers: These are by far the most used in the design of EDFA (erbium-doped fiber amplifier) amplifiers. They show strong absorption at 1550 nm for signal optimization in the C and L bands. These fibers are generally single-clad, meaning that both the signal light and the pump must be coupled into the core of the fiber in an amplification system.
Erbium-Ytterbium (EY) Fibers: These fibers are designed for operation at 1550 nm. They show high absorption for the design of high-power optical amplifiers (>5W). They are often used in a “double-clad” configuration for amplification systems pumped with multimode light injected into the cladding.

Polarization-Maintaining (PM) Fibers: Doped with erbium or a mix of erbium and ytterbium, these fibers enable the maintenance of linear polarization within the fiber.

Passive Fibers

Passive fibers are also an integral part of telecommunications networks. They are specifically designed to be connected seamlessly with active fibers. These products provide customers with a turnkey solution to ensure perfect connectivity for a reliable, high-efficiency solution.

Relay Fibers: An optical fiber amplifier system requires passive components such as couplers, isolators, Bragg gratings, and fibers to relay between these various components. Passive fibers offer good transmission without the need for absorption or emission functions to manufacture these components.
Attenuating Fibers: These fibers provide the capability to attenuate the signal stably over a wide range of wavelengths. Various models exist depending on the desired attenuation, for terrestrial or submarine networks. These fibers are perfect for signal measurement or equal signal distribution between different fibers. They are also found in high-power lasers to measure the signal intensity of a detector in the linear operating range.
Polarization-Maintaining (PM) Fibers: Whether passive or active, this type of fiber is especially useful for maintaining polarization (as we have already explained in one of our articles)! The maintaining parameter and beat length define the birefringence properties of these fibers.

Over 25 Years of Telecommunications Expertise

For over 25 years, Coractive has been a leading provider of optical fiber solutions, specializing in the development and manufacturing of specialized active and passive optical fibers.

Our expertise lies in the design and production of high-performance fibers tailored to specific needs, such as polarization-maintaining fibers, dispersion-compensating fibers, erbium-doped fibers, and erbium-ytterbium fibers. Coractive’s innovative technologies enable advanced functionalities in the telecommunications industry, meeting the growing demand for reliable and efficient optical communication solutions.

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