The development history and future trend of optical fiber communication technology

The development history and future trend of optical fiber communication technology

name：Puaoran （蒲傲然 ）
学校信息：电子科技大学格拉斯哥学院
班级：EEE6
UESTC ID：2017200506023

Introduction:
Optical fiber communication technology is based on the requirement of information to the people more and more developed a new technology, it is because of the powerful communication technology as the foundation, in order to make the optical fiber communication technology gets swift and violent development, the development from the beginning to now, after repeated experiments and improve the optical fiber technology, optical fiber communication technology matures, now meet the requirements of people on the latest information, has made a great contribution to communication industry, occupies a great proportion in the communications industry.

1. The development history of optical fiber communication
   Optical signals became a medium of communication in 1880 when Alexander Graham Bell, an American scientist, and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter conducted early experiments. This experiment makes optical signal communication possible. In his experiments, bell modulated sound signals into a beam of light and successfully transmitted them wirelessly between two buildings. The experimental transmission distance is about 213 meters. [1] the significance of this experiment lies in the successful application of light beam as carrier in the field of communication, and the laboratory application of light beam propagation signal has been practiced. It has become a pioneering attempt in the development of optical communication. However, in this experiment, because bell took the atmosphere as the transmission medium of optical signals, the signal was inevitably faced with various unstable interference and high attenuation rate in the air media during the transmission process. But the wireless optical transmission technology faces the problem is difficult to solve. It was not until laser technology and optical fiber technology became more and more mature that optical communication technology was able to mature rapidly.
   In 1965, Charles Kun Gao, a Chinese scientist, proposed that the attenuation rate of optical signal in communication fiber should be reduced to 20dB /km, which is the key threshold for the realization of optical fiber communication (when the attenuation rate of glass fiber is as high as 1000dB /km).[2] this reasoning has led to a fierce scientific competition among scientists around the world to find low-loss materials and suitable fibers to meet such standards. In 1966, Charles Gao led his team through a lot of new attenuation rate test, found that high purity silicon dioxide is an ideal medium to optical fiber communication, and found that high attenuation mainly comes from the glass fiber contains many impurities, and is not a period when many physicists think “scattering is the main cause of the high attenuation rate”. Over the next few years, Dr. Kao’s efforts gained traction at bell LABS and led to the development of optical fibers for communications.
   In 1970, corning invented the world’s first optical fiber for communication. [3] this study successfully reduced the attenuation rate of optical signal in the fiber to 20dB /km. At the same time, the maturation of GaAs semiconductor laser technology also brought the theoretical light source to optical fiber communication technology, which together promoted the practical application of optical fiber communication in the field of long-distance communication. On this basis, optical fiber communication system has gone through four epoch-making development stages.
   Since 1975, the first generation of commercial optical fiber communication system has been gradually developed. The system USES GaAs semiconductor laser sources to form optical signals at 0.8 microns wavelength, which propagate through optical fibers. The first-generation system achieved a transmission rate of 45Mb /s and extended the relay distance to 10km.Not long after that, in 1977, General Telephone and Electronics (GTE) commercialized fiber-optic communication lines and successfully laid them. In April 1977, the first fibre-based telephone communication line was laid in long beach, California. The line supported transmission rates of 6Mb /s. In September of the same year, the second 9 km fiber optic communication line was laid in Turin, Italy, using the two-wire laying mode, and the transmission rate of the whole line reached 140Mb /s [4].
   Early optical fiber communication systems were limited by dispersion in multimode optical fibers. Therefore, the application of single-mode optical fiber transmission technology in the second-generation optical fiber communication system developed in the early 1980s greatly improved the performance of the whole system. The second generation system USES InGaAsP semiconductor laser, and the optical signal wavelength is located at 1.3 microns. At the same time, SaskTel completed the construction of the longest commercial optical fiber network in the world at that time, covering 3,268 km and connecting 52 communities [5]. In 1987, second-generation commercial optical fiber communication systems provided transmission rates as high as 1.7gb /s, with relay distances of up to 50km.
   The development of the third-generation optical fiber communication system is based on the discovery of indium gallium arsenide complex and the development of indium gallium arsenide photodiode. Engineers overcame the early dispersion of a phosphoarsenide indium gallium arsenide (InGaAsP) semiconductor laser and successfully achieved a third-generation optical fiber communication system with a transmission rate of up to 2.5 Gb /s and a relay distance of 100 km.
   The development of the fourth-generation optical fiber communication system is inseparable from the gradual maturity of two core technologies. Firstly, the application of wavelength division multiplexing technology makes the capacity of signal transmitted in optical fiber increase explosively. Taking wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) with 128 wavelengths as an example, its transmission capacity is 128 times higher than that of single-wavelength transmission. It also established the leading position of optical fiber communication network in long-distance communication system. Secondly, the application of optical amplification technology greatly improves the relay distance of the system and reduces the cost of laying and maintaining the whole line. These two revolutionary technologies have improved the transmission capacity of optical fiber communication network year by year. Since 1992, the speed of optical fiber communication has been increasing rapidly at the rate of doubling every six months. By 2001, the transmission rate of commercial optical fiber communication systems had jumped explosively from 10Gb /s of a single wavelength to 10TB /s, fully demonstrating the advantages of large capacity and long distance of optical fiber communication systems and becoming an important support for the development of global Internet.
   The development of the fifth generation optical fiber communication system is directed to achieve the predictable wavelength range expansion by using low-water-peak optical fiber. Traditional optical fiber has only three low-loss wavelength Windows, namely 850nm(the first window), 1310nm(the second window) and 1550nm(the third window).In recent years, the fourth window (l-band), the fifth window (full-wave fiber) and the s-band window have been developed successively. The significance of the development of these Windows lies in the realization of low-loss wavelength Windows up to 1280nm-1625nm wide, so as to achieve a substantial increase in transmission capacity. In addition, the application of optical solitons, namely ultrashort optical pulse signals, has inherent advantages in offset dispersion effect and transmission capacity, and is also the direction of the development of optical fiber communication.

2. The development status of optical fiber communication technology

3. Optical soliton communication
   Optical soliton communication is one of the optical fiber communication technology, it is not the way with the aid of the line, but depends on the optical properties of the signal, the use of optical fiber communication technology for signal transmission, by using the theory of ultrashort optical pulse optical soliton to the effective transmission of the signal, by have a large amount of signal transmission characteristics of optical soliton, is of great significance for long-distance signal transmission. In addition, optical soliton technology is more practical for ultra-long distance transmission, in high-speed optical fiber communication technology, it is a relatively advanced technology. The application of optical soliton technology in signal transmission can improve the speed of signal transmission, and the transmission can be completed by using ultrashort pulses in the time domain, and ultrashort pulses in the frequency domain are of great significance for improving the signal transmission speed of the communication system.

4. Single-mode fiber and multi-mode fiber
   With the continuous development of network technology, optical fiber communication technology has developed more mature, optical fiber communication technology and related systems are becoming more perfect. At present, people pay more attention to the long-distance transmission of signals. In order to meet this demand to the greatest extent, the optical fiber communication mode should adopt single-mode and multi-mode optical fiber. For single-mode fiber, it is mainly suitable for long distance transmission, but the multimode transmission distance compared with the single mode transmission distance is longer, so the single-mode and multimode optical fiber is used in different areas and regional transmission of a signal, usually, multimode fiber value is low, is applied to short distance of signal transmission, and long distance transmission with single mode fiber.

5. Wavelength division multiplexing system
   Because the WDM system has the characteristics of long transmission distance and large capacity, the application of this technology is of great significance to improve the capacity of optical fiber transmission system. Therefore, the application of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) system in transocean optical transmission system has a good prospect. In signal technology under the background of rising, the development of WDM system are better, at present, the 6 Tbit WDM system has wide application in various fields, and the transmission distance have greater ascension, especially WDM wavelength converter - 1.25 G plate, it is complex with system concrete application in light of the night, and through a single channel speed has markedly improved teaching capacity, and WDM wavelength converter - 1.25 G plate transmission speeds of more than 640 Cbit/s, its application in different fields is of great significance.

6. The development trend of optical fiber communication technology
   The transmission of ultra-high speed, ultra-large capacity and ultra-long distance in fiber optic cable is the unremitting pursuit of fiber optic communication technology, and the realization of all-optical network coverage is the ultimate goal of fiber optic communication.

7. Super-capacity transmission technology
   At present, there are two ways to effectively improve the transmission capacity of optical fiber transmission system: wave division multiplexing (WDM) technology and optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) technology. WDM technology improves the transmission capacity by increasing the number of transmission channels in optical fiber. Currently, the 1.6tbit /s wavelength division multiplexing transmission system has been commercially available. OTDM technology improves the transmission capacity by improving the transmission rate of a single channel, and the maximum transmission rate of a single channel has reached 640 Gbit/s. One of the methods to further improve the transmission capacity of optical fiber communication system is to use WDM and OTDM technology together, that is, multiple OTDM signals are used for wavelength division multiplexing to form a super-capacity OTDM/ WDM communication system, so as to greatly improve the transmission capacity of optical fiber. On this basis, considering that the zeroing (RZ) coded signal has a relatively small duty space in the ultra-high speed communication system, and can effectively reduce the requirements for dispersion distribution, and has a strong adaptability to optical fiber nonlinearity, etc., it can eventually form a super-capacity OTDM/WDM communication system based on zeroing coding.

8. Optical soliton communication
   The so-called optical soliton refers to a picosecond (ps) class ultrashort optical pulse [6]. Its particularity lies in that it is located in the anomalous dispersion region of optical fiber. After long distance transmission, the nonlinear effect is balanced with the group velocity dispersion, and the velocity and waveform remain unchanged. Optical soliton communication is to use the characteristics of optical soliton to achieve ultra-long distance signal transmission without distortion. Compared with traditional optical fiber communication, optical soliton communication has the characteristics of large capacity, low bit error rate, strong anti-interference ability and no need of relay transmission. A set of ultra-high speed and ultra-long distance optical soliton communication system has been built with a very complete theoretical basis. In the future, optical soliton communication technology can be used in the application of ultrashort pulse technology, ultrashort pulse control technology in time-frequency domain and other fields. Although optical soliton communication is still in the experimental exploration stage, it is believed that it will have a bright application prospect in the ultra-high speed, ultra-large capacity and ultra-long distance optical fiber communication system in the future.

9. All-optical network
   The so-called all-optical network, refers to the network transmission and network switching process is all completed with optical signals, only in and out of the network before photoelectric conversion. There is no need to process electrical signals during transmission, so SDH, PDH, ATM and other transmission methods can be adopted to effectively improve network utilization [7].All-optical network will be the ultimate goal and ideal stage of the development of optical fiber communication technology. The future ultra-high speed communication network will be covered by all-optical network. The existing optical fiber network only realizes the all-optical communication between network nodes, while the network nodes are still electrical components. The performance of electrical components has become a big bottle neck of the total capacity improvement of communication system backbone network. All links in the all-optical network is made by light electric node for Yu Li Yun: optical fiber communication present situation and future development trend of the data of 870000 DIANZI CHANPIN KEKAOXING YU HUANJING SHIYAN electronic product reliability and environmental test in 2018, the communication between the nodes is also achieved QuanGuangHua, information transmission and exchange is always done in the form of light signals, the calculation and processing of data information in the process of no longer with “bits” as the basic unit, instead “wavelength”. Therefore, the all-optical network will be a very important topic in the future optical fiber communication technology research, but also a subversive topic.

10. Conclusion
    The rapid development of optical fiber communication technology not only benefits from many advantages brought by its transmission mode, but also benefits from the growth of information transmission demand brought by the rapid development of Internet technology. With the continuous advancement of information society, more efficient data transmission network has become the trend of optical fiber communication. This trend has promoted the research of all optical networks, optical soliton signal communication, dense wavelength division multiplexing technology and network intelligence. This paper introduces the development history, current application direction and main research direction of optical fiber communication technology. Especially at present, in the world, some research direction has made breakthrough progress, which also indicates that in the foreseeable future, a new generation of optical fiber communication technology is coming.

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