通信专业英语5.pptVIP

通信专业英语 Unit Five Optical Communication Part One The need for reliable long-distance communication systems has existed since antiquity. Over time, the sophistication of these systems has gradually improved, from smoke signals to telegraphs and finally to the first coaxial cable, put into service in 1940. As these communication systems improved, certain fundamental limitations presented themselves. Electrical systems were limited by their small repeater spacing (the distance a signal can propagate before attenuation requires the signal to be amplified), and the bit rate of microwave systems was limited by their carrier frequency. In the second half of the twentieth century, it was realized that an optical carrier of information would have a significant advantage over the existing electrical and microwave carrier signals. Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending light through an optical fiber. The light carrier is modulated to carry information. First developed in the 1970s, fiber-optic communication systems have revolutionized the telecommunications industry and played a major role in the advent of the Information Age. Because of its advantages over electrical transmission, the use of optical fiber has largely replaced copper wire communications in core networks in the developed world. As depicted in Figure 5-1, information (voice, data and video) from the source is encoded into electrical signals that can drive the transmitter. The fiber acts as an optical waveguide for the photons as they travel down the optical path toward the receiver. At the detector, the signals undergo an optical-to-electrical (OE) conversion, are decoded, and are sent to their destination. At one end of the system is a transmitter. This is the place of origin for information coming on to fiber-optic lines. The transmitter accepts coded electronic pulse information coming from copper wire. It then proces