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Hollow Optical Fibres Can Now Process Signals
Ami_Chan writes: "According to Nature, researchers at Bell Labs have created a new type of optical fibre. This fibre is hollow, and can be tuned to different wavelengths of light using 'plugs of fluid' and temperature changes within the fibre. This allows the fibres to process signals as well as transmit them. The full article is here."
wouldnt this system be susceptable to distortion through vibration? if the line is bumped it would cause a shift in the fluid, if only a minute one, possiply distroying the signal. it would be interesting to se what measures bell labs has taken to account for this if amy at all.
I want 2D games back.
I'd be interested to know exactly how it works. The article talks in length about heat and fluid changing the light but either I'm missing something or it doesn't really say how.
Is it really changing the light or are they creating some kind of filter?
The Anti-Blog
This sounds like it's based on the same technique used to make filters in the microwave band. By creating a transmission line with several appropriately spaced steps in the impedance, you can create a low-pass filter. With some more sophisticated branching of the line, you can make a high-pass or a band-pass filter. The technique relies on interference and reflection effects from the boundaries between the transmission line sections. I think they're doing the same sort of thing here; introducing fluid into the center of the line will change its refraction coefficient, which takes roughly the same role in the fiber that impedance does in a transmission line.
Would this type of wire be easier/harder to tap into than normal fiber optic wire?
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
will fiber optic ever be changed to an analog version with the wave of the light being the transport of data rather than the flashing?
It seems that the data would be moved much faster if the sensors were able to pick up on individual light colors and waves rather than just on/off of the light. This would be able to work similar to how a modem works with diffrent tones producing diffrent characters, etc...
ps.
If this is already how fiber works than my understanding is just way off and please disregard.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I can't wait.
The future I see coming out well before optical microprocessors:
Field Programmable Fiber Arrays. They will be hybrid chips with semiconductor controls and fiber optic IO. The telecoms are gonna shit their pants when this stuff comes out. These are going to be ultra-high speed stateless DSP's, capable of outprocessing their electronic counterparts in magnitudes of superiority.
Just imagine the benefits:
Less latency
Higher bandwidth
On-The-Fly topology reconfiguration
Learning switch fabric
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Glass is technically NOT a liquid, this is a myth.
Like old windows that are heavier on the bottom than the top.. and people say it's because it flows over time.
It's not. It's because the glass process at the time did not produce nice, even panes of glass, and it made SENSE to put the heavy side down, M'kay?