Fiber optics illustrated dictionary

1084 Pages·2003·24.267 MB·English

F
IBER
O
PTICS
ILLUSTRATED
D I C T I O N A RY
Advanced and Emerging Communications
Technologies Series
Series Editor-in-Chief: Saba Zamir
The Telecommunications Illustrated Dictionary, Second Edition,
Julie K. Petersen
Handbook of Emerging Communications Technologies: The Next Decade,
Rafael Osso
ADSL: Standards, Implementation, and Architecture, Charles K. Summers
Protocols for Secure Electronic Commerce, Mostafa Hashem Sherif
Protocols for Secure eCommerce, Second Edition, Mostafa Hashem Sherif
After the Y2K Fireworks: Business and Technology Strategies,
Bhuvan Unhelkar
Web-Based Systems and Network Management, Kornel Terplan
Intranet Performance Management, Kornel Terplan
Multi-Domain Communication Management Systems, Alex Galis
Fiber Optics Illustrated Dictionary, Julie K. Petersen
F
IBER
O
PTICS
ILLUSTRATED
D I C T I O N A RY
JULIE K. PETERSEN
Boca Raton London New York
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Preface
About This Dictionary
The reader might assume that the process of writing or using a fiber optics dictionary is dry
and uninteresting, but that really isn’t the case. Fiber optics is a vibrant field, not just in terms of its
growth and increasing sophistication, but also in terms of the people, places, and details that make
up this challenging and rewarding industry.
Fiber optics isn’t as specialized as many people assume, either. Fiber optics forms the heart of
the telephone industry, the nervous system of the computer network industry, and the organs of many
medical, dental, experimental, and satellite technologies. That’s part of the reason why this diction-
ary is so big. The Internet, the phone system, and wireless satellite systems are joined at the hip,
with fiber optics landlines often supplemented by satellite links and vice versa.
Fiber optics is attracting attention from many different sectors. In Spring 2001, over 35,000
people from a wide variety of backgrounds attended a major international fiber optics conference.
In spite of the inevitable peaks and slowdowns in the commercialization of any new technology,
interest from professionals is growing and there are now thousands of training and certification
courses for people who want to design, install, operate, and maintain fiber optic systems.
The Quest for Communication by Light
The fiber optics industry is very recent; most of the significant developments have occurred in
the last 60 years. The application of fiber to underlying telecommunications infrastructures became
important in the 1980s and the use of fiber spread to consumer products and local area networks by
the late 1990s.
The history of fiber optics is based upon the efforts of many multitalented, tireless inventors,
who traded social interactions for the thrill of discovery. These pioneers were passionate in their
search for a way to communicate with light. Alexander Graham Bell was more excited about his
Photophone, a light-based telephone, than almost anything he ever invented, even though it was a
commercial failure. Bell recognized that he didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle to make it a
viable technology and chose to move on, but that doesn’t mean the Photophone was a bad idea; it
just happened to be about 80 years ahead of its time.
The earliest pioneers recognized certain potentially ground-breaking properties of optical ma-
terials but weren’t quite sure what made them work and, hence, were unable to fully harness their
power. For example, in the 1600s, Rasmus Bartholin thoroughly described the doubly refracting
birefringent properties of Iceland spar, a type of transparent calcite, but wasn’t able to work out the
mathematics. Later, both Wollaston and Nicol recognized Iceland spar could be assembled into new
forms of prisms with special properties for controlling light, but it took many generations before
scientists like Thomas Young began to unravel the mathematics that made this material so uniquely
useful and applied that knowledge to describing the wavelike properties of light. No sooner had
scientists become comfortable with the idea of light behaving as waves when Max Planck set the
stage, in 1900, for a particle theory of light and Einstein elaborated and applied the new ideas in
quantum dynamics, leading to our current understanding of the photoelectric effect. With the com-
ing of the transistor and solid-state electronics, it was just a matter of time before smaller, less ex-
pensive fiber-based components could be constructed.
While optical science was evolving, the fabrication of pure glass was advancing as well. Many
optical technologies in communications originated in much the same way as tongue depressors and
penlights – doctors and dentists began using them to peer down people’s throats.
Scientists have long suspected that glass and light had capabilities far greater than anything yet
imagined, but they weren’t sure how to combine the two and still keep the signal within the lightguide.
In terms of communications applications, this was a big road block.
The idea of “bending” light isn’t new; Colladon and Tyndall demonstrated it in the mid-1800s
by directing light inside an arc of water. But the experiment remained an impractical curiosity until
glass rods were shown to refract light in the same way. Even so, the phenomenon of refraction needed
to be better understood before glass rods could be turned into effective fiber optic filaments.
By the middle of the 20th century, a few innovative scientists began coating glass with other
materials, following the lead of Nicol, who had bonded together two pieces of Iceland spar with
Canada balsam to create the Nicol prism. The new prism took advantage of the lower refractive
index of Canada balsam and the birefringent properties of Iceland spar to split a beam of light and
direct one beam out the side while the other continued forward. When the characteristic of light to
refract off lower refractive index materials was finally harnessed in the form of cladding, fiber op-
tics became a practical reality. From that point on, the quest for ideal proportions, purer glass, and
more powerful, controllable light sources spurred the industry onto the next level of evolution. In
the 1950s, the development of lasers provided the essential energy source that finally launched the
optical communications industry.
With fiber optics now widely deployed, has it become just another ubiquitous technology, like
telephone poles and automobiles? Perhaps in some ways this is true – cables for local area networks
can be readily purchased on the Internet and optical couplers cost only a few dollars. But that doesn’t
mean the industry has reached its limits or that the technology is no longer dynamically evolving.
Fiber-based networks are still in their infancy and the exploitation of the properties of light is still
young and full of promise. In addition, there are many areas of interest in which problems of instal-
lation and deployment are tackled in innovative ways. For example, the city of Houston has signed
an agreement to use a high-tech robot to navigate the city’s sewers to connect hundreds of premises
to the fiber optic broadband networks to complete the “last mile” between the populace and the
fiber backbone.
Fiber optics is also becoming important in the signage, lighting, and medical industries. Light-
weight, inexpensive colored light-guides, side-emitting filaments, linelights, and pointlights all have
exciting applications in architecture, interior design, industrial safety, marketing, fine arts, and crafts.
Hobbyists are using fiber filaments to light scale models and train sets. Inventive developers have
created fiber optic “fabric” in which the fiber optic filaments are bent to deliberately release light at
the joints where the weft crosses over the warp. Doctors and dentists use fiber optics for imaging
and surgery. Wherever light is needed, there’s a possibility a fiber optic filament can provide it.
Purpose of the Dictionary
It is the aim of this book to fill a gap in the literature on fiber optics. There is only one signifi-
cant fiber optics dictionary on the market and it was last published in 1998. Many advances have
occurred since that time that deserve to be documented. There is also a need for a text priced within
the range of university students and technicians taking their certification training. This dictionary
can meet that need as well.
Audience for the Dictionary
The Fiber Optics Illustrated Dictionary is suitable for a wide variety of beginning profession-
als in fiber optics, as well as students and instructors. It will also be of interest to professionals in
other fields who want to get a beginning to intermediate introduction to optical technologies. The
book covers historical antecedents, network protocols for telephone and computer networks, satel-
lite technologies, telephone terminology, basic physics concepts, and units of measure important in
optics. It also explains many math and light-refracting concepts through a combination of words
and pictures so that concepts that are hard to understand at first are explained in two ways.
This book does not attempt to duplicate the information in the FOLDOC online dictionary or
the Federal Standards documents. These dictionaries are readily available and searchable on the
Internet and are well documented in Martin Weik’s dictionary. Instead, the Fiber Optics Illustrated
Dictionary takes a current and comprehensive look at the fiber optics field and the various applica-
tions of fiber optics, rounds out the picture with some introductory physics and fusion splicing in-
formation, and presents it in a form that is illustrated, cross-referenced, and enhanced by historical
biographies and URL addresses for major not-for-profit and educational sites on the Web.
I hope you enjoy using the book as much as I enjoyed preparing it (despite the long hours and
endless search for accurate and often elusive information).
I am indebted to the hard work and enthusiasm of the professionals at CRC who helped bring it
to fruition, including Jerry Papke, who contributed the original concept, Chris Andreasen and the
proofreading staff, who labored over many pages, and Jamie Sigal, Nora Konopka, and the folks in
the production and marketing departments who all answered questions and moved the project along.
Thanks also to Dawn Snider for her excellent interpretation of the cover.
Julie K. Petersen
About the Author
Julie K. Petersen is a technology consultant, author, educator, and outdoor enthusiast, and readily admits
to being a technophile. Her whole house is wired with computer and video links, both inside and out, and
there’s rarely a day when she isn’t configuring some new piece of equipment to broadcast over a wireless
transceiver. Since TRS-80 computing days, she’s been tweaking and fixing her own equipment and talks
about configuring a wearable computer to interface directly with GPS data on the Internet.
“The technology is already here; it’s just a matter of putting all the pieces together. What you do
is take a head-worn display that projects an image on your retina with a laser beam that is eye-safe;
such systems already exist. Then you have a body-worn GPS sensor with an interface and wireless
link to the Internet that goes through a geographical server. The server matches your GPS coordinates
with Web sites that offer information on maps, restaurants, nearby movie theaters, libraries, schools,
etc. You could have a profile online for your preferences, and the display would change as your
location changes. The process would be transparent, like a third eye, similar to the navigational
images a fighter pilot sees projected over the landscape on the jet’s transparent canopy, except even
more natural. I’ve named it the G-Eye™ for geographic eye or GPS eye.
The image projected on the user’s retina by the G-Eye system would be tailor-made to the
viewer’s preferences. It doesn’t have to be a one-way communication either. If the wearer were a
professional on the job, like a newscaster or research scientist, he or she could be wearing sensors
with fiber optic faceplates to sense body changes or changes in the surrounding environment,
pressure, temperature, light levels, etc., that could be fed back to the computer network to act as a
hands-free ‘body interface’ or a roving human sensing system. The possibilities are endless. Some
people may see this as far-fetched, the idea of the human organism as a sort of sensory node on a
distributed network, but young people readily understand and adapt to concepts such as this,
especially if the new technology promotes or enhances social interactions, which this obviously
could.
The G-Eye would have been impractical a few years ago. Compact diode lasers, sensors that
could respond quickly, and high-bandwidth network links weren’t yet sufficiently developed. The
limited capacity of the network infrastructure would have made such a two-way system impractical,
but the new broadband fiber optic networks have astonishing speed and capacity, enough to
individually outstrip the current collective traffic on the Internet. It’s feasible to imagine the entire
human populace interconnected through a combination of wired and wireless optical links and
satellites.
Now equip the G-Eye with an optional digital video cam and microphone and you have an
integrated network and digital phone/videoconferencing system that travels with you, instead of a
half-dozen different, unconnected, bulky systems. If there are interruptions in the network radio
link, then you could carry a length of fiber optic cable that jacks into the nearest cafe or network
vending machine for a clean wired link. Fiber optic cables are lighter and more robust than most
people realize. If there’s an emergency, the problem of clogged airwaves (familiar to traditional
cell phone users) could be alleviated by people having these pocket cables integrated with their
G-Eye systems as a backup to wireless connections. There might even be an all-optical solution in
certain circumstances. Imagine free-air optical transceivers mounted on buildings (like small satellite
receiving dishes) that people jack into with optical modems, somewhat like a two-way infrared
remote control. That way, if you’re sitting in a park or at a sidewalk cafe, you could aim at a
transceiver to maintain connectivity. People have a tendency to think in terms of single solutions
when often the best solution is a variety of options. Why put just forks in your cutlery drawer when
there’s room for knives and spoons as well?
Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to build the G-Eye system. The time demands of writing a
comprehensive dictionary on the subject of fiber optics, which changes even as it is documented, is
considerable and my spare time is almost nonexistent, but I’m fascinated by the depth and breadth
of applications people are developing for optical waveguides, faceplates, and sensors and I’m sure
there are many more surprises in store.”
The author lives in the Pacific Northwest and enjoys reading, music, film, strategy games, and interesting
cuisine. She advocates the use of technology to enhance the quality of life and solve human problems and
especially encourages scientists and engineers to apply technology in ways that help reduce rather than
extend the work week.
How to Use the
Fiber Optics Illustrated Dictionary
General Format There are two sections to this reference: (1) a main alphabetical body, with nu-
meral entries following Z and (2) several appendices with various charts, an
extended section on ATM, a quick lookup acronym dictionary, and a timeline
of telecommunications inventions and technologies.
Entries Dictionary entries follow a common format, with the term or phrase in bold-
face, followed by its abbreviation or acronym, if applicable. Pronunciation is
included in cases where it may not be obvious. Alternate names (e.g., William
Thompsom, a.k.a. Lord Kelvin) are cross-referenced. The body of the entry is
included next, with multiple definitions numbered if there are several mean-
ings for a term. Finally, where appropriate, there are cross-references, RFC list-
ings, and URLs included at the end, in that order.
Abbreviations In many cases, the term and its abbreviation are described together so the reader
doesn’t have to look up abbreviated references to understand a particular entry;
for example, cathode-ray tube will often be followed by (CRT) and Federal Com-
munications Commission by (FCC) so the words and their commonly used ab-
breviations become familiar to the reader.
Web Addresses Web addresses based upon Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are listed for
nonprofit, not-for-profit, charitable, and educational institutions and, in a few
rare instances, for commercial enterprises with particular relevance for telecom-
munications or with substantial educational content on their Web sites. For the
most part, commercial URLs are not included. If the address isn’t listed, it can
often be guessed (http://www.companyname.com/) or otherwise easily located
through Web search engines listed in Appendix D.
RFCs Request for Comments (RFC) documents are an integral part of the Internet,
and extremely important in terms of documenting the format and evolution of
Internet protocols and technologies. For this reason, RFC references are listed
with many of the Internet-related references and can be found in numerous RFC
repositories online. There is also a partial list of significant or interesting RFC
documents listed according to category in Appendix F.
Diagrams and charts Illustrations are included as close to the related definition as was possible in the
space provided. Extensive listings of the various ITU-T Series Recommenda-
tions are included in almost every chapter because they are the standards upon
which most Internet technologies, telecommunications standards, and commer-
cial products are built. Charts are usually included on the same page as the re-
lated definition or the one following.
term or phrase
Bootstrap Protocol BOOTP. (pron. boot-pee)
abbreviation or An IP/UDP client/server means of storing and pro-
acronym viding configuration information. BOOTP evolved
in the ARPANET days to allow diskless client ma-
pronunciation
chines, and other machines which might not know
their own Internet addresses, to discover the IP ad-
dress, the address of a server host, and the name of
definition a file to be loaded into memory and executed. This
is accomplished in two phases: address determina-
tion and bootfile selection; and file transfer, typi-
cally with TFTP. This has since evolved into Dy-
cross-references
namic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). See
Address Resolution Protocol, Dynamic Host Con-
Request for Comments figuration Protocol, Reverse Address Resolution
reference number
Protocol, RFC 951.
http://www.urlgoeshere.org/
Web address (URL)
Contents
Alphabetical Listings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Numerals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1043
Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1049
A. Fiber Optics Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1050
B. Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1052
C. ITU-T Series Recommendations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1055
D. List of World Wide Web Search Engines . . . . . . . . . . . 1056
E. List of Internet Domain Name Extensions . . . . . . . . . . 1057
F. Short List of Request for Comments (RFC) . . . . . . . . . 1059
G. National Associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1062
H. Dial Equivalents, Radio Alphabet, Morse Code,
Metric Prefixes/Values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1066
I. ASCII Character and Control Codes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1067