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.
In 1966 Kao and Hockham proposed optical fibers at STC Laboratories (STL), Harlow, when they showed that the losses of 1000 db/km in existing glass (compared to 5-10 db/km in coaxial cable) was due to contaminants, which could potentially be removed.[1]
The development of lasers in the 1960s solved the first problem of a light source, further development of high-quality optical fiber was needed as a solution to the second. Optical fiber was finally developed in 1970 by Corning Glass Works with attenuation low enough for communication purposes (about 20dB/km), and at the same time GaAs semiconductor lasers were developed that were compact and therefore suitable for fiber-optic communication systems.
After a period of intensive research from 1975 to 1980, the first commercial fiber-optic communication system was developed, which operated at a wavelength around 0.8 µm and used GaAs semiconductor lasers. This first generation system operated at a bit rate of 45 Mbit/s with repeater spacing of up to 10 km.
On 22 April, 1977, General Telephone and Electronics sent the first live telephone traffic through fiber optics, at 6 Mbit/s, in Long Beach, California.
The second generation of fiber-optic communication was developed for commercial use in the early 1980s, operated at 1.3 µm, and used InGaAsP semiconductor lasers. Although these systems were initially limited by dispersion, in 1981 the single-mode fiber was revealed to greatly improve system performance. By 1987, these systems were operating at bit rates of up to 1.7 Gb/s with repeater spacing up to 50 km.
The first transatlantic telephone cable to use optical fiber was TAT-8, based on Desurvire optimized laser amplification technology. It went into operation in 1988.
TAT-8 was developed as the first undersea fiber optic link between the United States and Europe. TAT-8 is more than 3,000 nautical miles (5,600 km) in length and was the first transatlantic cable to use optical fibers. It was designed to handle a mix of information. When inaugurated, it had an estimated lifetime in excess of 20 years. TAT-8 was the first of a new class of cables, even though it had already been used in long-distance land and short-distance undersea operations. Its installation was preceded by extensive deep-water experiments and trials conducted in the early 1980s to demonstrate the project's feasibility.
Third-generation fiber-optic systems operated at 1.55 µm and had loss of about 0.2 dB/km. They achieved this despite earlier difficulties with pulse-spreading at that wavelength using conventional InGaAsP semiconductor lasers. Scientists overcame this difficulty by using dispersion-shifted fibers designed to have minimal dispersion at 1.55 µm or by limiting the laser spectrum to a single longitudinal mode. These developments eventually allowed 3rd generation systems to operate commercially at 2.5 Gbit/s with repeater spacing in excess of 100 km.
The fourth generation of fiber-optic communication systems used optical amplification to reduce the need for repeaters and wavelength-division multiplexing to increase fiber capacity. These two improvements caused a revolution that resulted in the doubling of system capacity every 6 months starting in 1992 until a bit rate of 10 Tb/s was reached by 2001. Recently, bit-rates of up to 14 Tbit/s have been reached over a single 160 km line using optical amplifiers.
The focus of development for the fifth generation of fiber-optic communications is on extending the wavelength range over which a WDM system can operate. The conventional wavelength window, known as the C band, covers the wavelength range 1.53-1.57 µm, and the new dry fiber has a low-loss window promising an extension of that range to 1.30-1.65 µm. Other developments include the concept of "optical solitons, " pulses that preserve their shape by counteracting the effects of dispersion with the nonlinear effects of the fiber by using pulses of a specific shape.
In the late 1990s through 2000, the fiber optic communication industry became associated with the dot-com bubble. Industry promoters, and research companies such as KMI and RHK predicted vast increases in demand for communications bandwidth due to increased use of the Internet, and commercialization of various bandwidth-intensive consumer services, such as video on demand. Internet protocol data traffic was said to be increasing exponentially, and at a faster rate than integrated circuit complexity had increased under Moore's Law. From the bust of the dot-com bubble through 2006, however, the main trend in the industry has been consolidation of firms and offshoring of manufacturing to reduce costs.
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