Advantages:
- Information can be carried by radio waves transmitted down coaxial cables at a rate of about 107 bits per second. But this can be increased by several orders of magnitude if information is carried as light pulses down an optical fibre. A typical optical fibre cable can carry about 9000 telephone channels, or over 1000 music channels, or 8 television channels, which is over five times the capacity of the best copper cable.
- Optical fibres can carry information over greater distances without significant attenuation. Coppoer cables require boosters to be spaced much closer together.
- An optical fibre cable is lighter, smaller and easier to handle than a copper cable.
- Optical signals are free from ‘noise’ due to electrical interference.
- ‘Crosstalk’ between adjacent channels is negligible.
- Also, because light waves do not create an external magnetic field (unlike an electric current flowing down a wire), they are far less susceptible to external surveillance.
- Apart from communication, optical fibres can be used as endoscopes in medicine and engineering to ‘see’ inaccessible places. This means that ‘exploratory surgery’ can be avoided.
Disadvantages:
- Limited physical arc of cable. Bend it too much and it will break.
- Difficult to splice.
- Physical vibration will show up as signal noise.
- Loss of light in fibre due to scattering. (Attenuation)
gvujkhi
its fiber not fibre
in fiber optics attenuation is very less around 1db per km so that is very much negligible so that is not a disadvantage at all.