Fiber Optics: The Past and

the Future.
Peter Schultz, PhD
Director,
OFS Fitel (USA)

Bandwidth Demand Has Driven

Telecom Since Its Invention

1000X

Ted Maiman Holding the First Laser

(ruby) Demonstrated May 16, 1960

Glass Fiber Optics: Pretty to Look at,

but Useless for Communications

Don Keck, Bob Maurer and Peter Schultz

Cornings fiber research team

Two Critical Requirements

for a Working Fiber

1. Exceptional optical quality (goal of <20

dB/km). The best conventional optical
glasses available in 1966 had
losses >10,000 dB/km.

2. Single-mode design geometry.

Fiber Cross Section: single-mode design

High index
Glass fiber core
(10 micron dia.)
Low index
Glass fiber cladding
(125 micron dia.)
~ dia. of human hair

n ~ 1%
Plastic coating
(250 micron dia.)

Dr. Frank Hyde, chemist:

Cornings father of flame
hydrolysis in 1934.

Flame Hydrolysis Process to Make Fused Silica Glass

H2 + O2
SiCl4
O2

Burner

Flame

Chemical
distillation by
vaporization
SiO2 glass
soot

Boule Process
(deposition in furnace)

Fused Silica Boule Made by the Flame Hydrolysis

Furnace Process

10

Original inside vapor deposition process concept

(circa 1969):
Flame

H 2 + O2

Vacuum

Burner

SiCl4

TiO2 + SiO2
glass soot

TiCl4

Chemical distillation
by vaporization

Silica glass tube

Fiber Preform Deposition Apparatus 1970

Rotating Lathe
Headstock

Vapor Generator

Flame

Cladding
Tube

12

Schultz and outside vapor deposition method to make

step and graded index optical fiber preforms (circa 1972)

Soot deposition
Preform

Burner

13

Preform containing 3000 km of fiber drawn at

30+ meters per sec (circa 2009).

Cumulative Total of Cabled Fiber Installed,

S-M and MM, Pre-1989 through 2015, in Million F-km
2,500
2 Billion total to
be passed in 2014

2,000
1 Billion total
passed in 2008.

Int'l Subm.
Emerging

1,500

Asia-Pacific

1,000

E. Europe

500

W. Europe
N. America

Data: CRU Analysis

Average World Price of S-M Fibre and Cable,

1983-2015, in US$ per km (current US$)
1,000

100

10

G.652 Cabled Fiber

G.652 Bare Fiber
1

Data: CRU Analysis

Impact of fiber optics on information capacity

10,000,000,000,000X (10 trillion X)

1000X

It is becoming difficult to increase capacity at

the same rate

R.-J. Essiambre, G. Kramer, P. J. Winzer, G. J. Foschini, and B. Goebel, Capacity limits in optical fiber
networks, J. Lightwave Techn., vol 28, pp. 662-701, Feb. 2010.

Multi-Core Fibers
Multiple cores may provide ~ 10x improvement, but can
we leverage this to 100x?

B. Zhu et al., Seven core multicore fiber transmission for passive

optical network, Optics Express, 2010.

Coherent receivers now allow us to think

about using more than one mode for
transmission.
Single mode fiber optics has used only the
LP01 mode for the past 25 years.

A 3-moded fiber from OFS was used to

transmit simultaneously over LP01, LP11a,
and LP11b (see OFC 2011 Bell Labs
paper).

Air Core Fibers have tantalizing properties, such

as ultra low latency, but high loss ~ 1 dB/km

Fabrication:
Stack and draw of glass capillaries
Draw while pressurizing holes
Hole structure is vitally important and is dictated by surface tension effects
Drawn Fiber

Stacked capillaries
Pressurized
Fiber Draw

1.7 dB/km

Fiber lasers based on rare earth-doped silica (~50 mW), first

demonstrated by David Payne in 1987, greatly simplified f/o
communication systems.

IPG 10 kW fiber laser for welding and cutting

(circa 2011)

Thank you