Industry
A communication system transmits information from one place to another, whether separated by a few kilometers or by transoceanic distances. Information is often carried by an electromagnetic carrier wave whose frequency can vary from a few megahertz to several hundred terahertz. Optical communication systems use high carrier frequencies (~ 100 THz) in the visible or near-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. They are sometimes called lightwave systems to distinguish them from microwave systems, whose carrier frequency is typically smaller by five orders of magnitude (~ 1 GHz). Fiber-optic communication systems are lightwave systems that employ optical fibers for information transmission. Such systems have been deployed worldwide since 1980 and have revolutionized the field of telecommunications. Indeed, lightwave technology, together with microelectronics, led to the advent of the “information age” during the 1990s.
As mentioned earlier, optical communication systems differ in principle from microwave systems only in the frequency range of the carrier wave used to carry the information. The optical carrier frequencies are typically ~ 200 THz, in contrast with the microwave carrier frequencies (~ 1 GHz). An increase in the information capacity of optical communication systems by a factor of up to 10,000 is expected simply because of such high carrier frequencies used for lightwave systems. This increase can be understood by noting that the bandwidth of the modulated carrier can be up to a few percent of the carrier frequency. Taking, for illustration, 1% as the limiting value, optical communication systems have the potential of carrying information at bit rates ~ 1 Tb/s. It is this enormous potential bandwidth of optical communication systems that is the driving force behind the worldwide development and deployment of lightwave systems.
In Optiwave, we support the applications below. More is coming. Please contact us if you can’t find yours in this list.
- Optical amplifiers
- Fiber lasers
- LiFi systems
- Visible light communication (VLC)
- Free space optical (FSO) communication system
- Long-haul optical communication systems
- Advanced modulation systems
- Probabilistic pulse shaping for ultrahigh data transmission
- Passive optical networks
- OFDM and OCDMA
- New radio front-haul
- Spatial division multiplexed communication systems
- Orbital angular momentum (OAM) systems
- Multicore fiber