What's Next, Hollow Optical Fiber???
How fast can technology move? Just when you think you are starting to understand something, they throw something new at you.
The headline reads; "Light propagates through hollow optical fiber. A unique, hollow-core fiber based on omni-directional mirror technology may soon offer transmission advantages."
Roll the perfect mirror into a tiny tube and what do you get? A hollow optical fiber with increased wavelength real estate, increased power-per channel, reduced need for amplification and regeneration compared to conventional fibers.
The advantages over conventional silica glass fiber include; the ability to guide light through air and around sharp corners, the possibility of lower losses, higher intensity and larger bandwidth.
Existing fibers cannot send signals greater than several mW per channel. The estimates are that OmniGuide fiber could carry a signal of 1 W or better, producing a 100 times improvement over what exists today. Loss improvements over today's standards of about 50 times because of the low attenuation associated with moving light through air. The OmniGuide waveguide is designed to have a wider bandwidth, they estimate the fiber will have an effective available real estate of 600 to 800nm, compared to 200nm of conventional fibers.
Once you have a dielectric mirror that can reflect, no matter what the incoming light's incident angle or polarization, the applications are extremely broad. In addition to fiber itself, the material can be tuned to reflect certain wavelength ranges and transmit the rest of the spectrum. This could be very useful in some of today's fiber technology.
We are still looking at a year or two to have a continuous manufacturing process. Could this be the next generation for communications: copper, silica fiber and then hollow mirrored tubes?
This is a reminder that we have to stay in touch with the industry. You cannot stop trying to strive ahead as this industry is so fluid. Don't blink; you could miss an entire technological era.
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