Fiber Optics: The Most Efficient Way to Transport Data, Even in Harsh Environments

Many favorable attributes of fiber optic cables are readily acknowledged. However, a bias against using fiber optics in harsh environments remains.

Fiber Optic Cables

Fiber optic cables carry many times more data than is feasible over copper-based connectivity. This increased bandwidth is necessary for the highest definition video and other data intensive purposes, but the fact that optical signals travel at close to the speed of light is also vitally important. This makes near real-time data latency feedback requirements a reality. When attempting to target an inbound hypersonic missile, microseconds count, and optical cable is 99% faster than copper. Latency times and reliability are also of paramount importance in emerging applications such as autonomous driving or drone deliveries.

Fiber optics has other inherent benefits as well. It conducts no electricity and is completely immune to electromagnetic interference (EMI), generates no heat throughout the cable, and signals cannot be poached off fiber optics as they can easily be done in copper-based systems. Also, fiber optics is future-proof. The physics of light do not change, so the fiber optics being used today will essentially be the same a hundred years from now. Additionally, fiber optics has a fraction of the weight of copper. This is crucially important for aerospace applications where engineers work for days simply to save a pound of mass.

All these favorable attributes are readily acknowledged; however, there remains a bias against using fiber optics in harsh environments. Most of our everyday lives are not lived in such settings; our homes and offices are protected places where less vigorous equipment is used. Nevertheless, there are many applications where electronic equipment is exposed to more robust conditions that include temperature extremes, physical shock, high vibrations, intense electrical interference, atmospheric pressure fluctuations, water immersion, corrosive chemical exposure and many other harsh conditions that have the potential to disable the system that these electronics are intended to service. Such systems are most vulnerable at the interconnection devices.