Part 3 - Fiber Optic Cables

Fiber optic cable is generally include indoor fiber cable and outdoor fiber cables. Since the loss of light transmitting through the optical fiber is much lower than electrically transmitting through copper cable, fiber optic cable is a much better option in long-haul transmission.

Fiber Optic Cable is also far superior to copper cable when high bandwidth, long-distance, high speed, or immunity to Electromagnetic interference (EMI) is required.

There are two most common types of optical fiber, single mode optical fiber, and multimode optical fiber: 

Single-mode Optical Fiber

Single-mode Optical Fiber carries only a single mode of light. There is a very thin core of 9 μm, and is not limited by modal dispersion. Single-mode fiber allows higher fidelity when light is transmitted through the fiber, thus resulting in a higher bandwidth than multimode fiber. Therefore, single-mode fiber is usually applied in long-distance communications. 

Multimode Optical Fiber

Multimode optical fiber enables hundreds of light modes with a thicker fiber core of 50 μm or 62.5 μm. However, it is limited by model dispersion while single-mode fiber is not. Hence multimode fiber supports limited bandwidth and distance compared to single-mode fiber. Despite the disadvantages of bandwidth and supported distance, multimode fiber has the benefits of larger core size and is easily connected to a light source like LED, providing cost-savings. This is why multimode fiber is popular in short-distance communication.