The fiber optic broadband industry is one of the fastest-growing and most promising sectors within the current information industry. Accelerating the construction of fiber optic broadband networks can promote the upgrading of network infrastructure, enhance independent innovation capabilities, drive the development of related industries, and is of significant strategic importance in responding to the financial crisis, achieving stable growth, adjusting the economic structure, ensuring people's livelihoods, promoting stability, and ultimately enhancing the country's long-term competitiveness. Furthermore, the development of fiber optic transmission also has progressive implications for the security industry.
New fiber optic technologies are emerging one after another.
According to media reports, researchers at the University of Southampton in the UK have created a new type of optical fiber capable of transmitting data at 99.7% of the speed of light. Using this new fiber, researchers achieved a data transmission speed of 73.7 Tbps, equivalent to approximately 10 TBps, which is 1000 times faster than the most advanced 49 Gb optical fiber currently available, while also significantly reducing latency.
The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 meters per second, but its speed of propagation in other media is usually much slower. In conventional optical fibers made of quartz glass, the speed of light is slowed by 31%. In fact, light travels faster in air than in glass, which is why researchers at the University of Southampton used a hollow optical fiber that is almost entirely filled with air for transmission.
Researchers overcame this problem by radically redesigning the hollow structure using a photonic bandgap edge. This new design achieves low loss (3.5 dB/km), wide bandwidth (160 nm), and a delay rate far superior to conventional optical fibers, resulting in a 31% increase in the speed of light and data transmission.
Fiber optic surveillance applications are attracting much attention.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, with the development of digital signal processing (DSP) technology and fiber optic sensing technology, a brand-new security technology—fiber optic monitoring technology—has gained global attention and has been rapidly adopted in Europe and the United States. This technology differs from existing monitoring technologies based on traditional electromagnetic effects and characterized by point-like deployment. It uses optical fiber as an external deployment device that integrates intrusion signal sensing and transmission, creating a comprehensive sensor network to achieve multi-area, multi-form (linear, planar, and spatial) vibration detection and voice pickup. The key features of this type of monitoring technology include:
◇ It is concealed and easy to deploy. Fiber optics, being a linear and flexible medium, can be deployed covertly and non-destructively in various environments and areas, offering flexible deployment options. It can comprehensively supplement the perimeter alarm, passageway alarm, and spatial alarm layers of a cultural heritage security system. Its concealment also significantly reduces the vigilance of intruders towards security equipment.
◇ It possesses outstanding resistance to vandalism. Because optical fibers are deployed covertly, and their underlying technology is confidential, unlike traditional technologies such as cameras and infrared blocking cables which are widely known and easily identified, evaded, and destroyed; furthermore, optical fiber probes emit no electromagnetic radiation and are more resistant to electromagnetic interference. Ordinary detection devices that rely on electromagnetic and metallic effects struggle to detect optical fiber probes. Therefore, the possibility of optical fiber monitoring technology being circumvented or damaged is extremely low, making it highly resistant to vandalism.
◇ Fiber optic cables offer advantages such as long transmission distances without repeaters and low energy dependence. The sensor network deployed throughout the monitoring area requires no power supply, thus significantly reducing the risk that electronic equipment might pose a safety hazard to wooden or other material structures. Furthermore, systems that do not require on-site power supply eliminate concerns about security system paralysis due to power outages.
The fiber optic broadband industry is one of the fastest-growing and most promising sectors in the current information industry. Accelerating the construction of fiber optic broadband networks can promote the upgrading of network infrastructure, enhance independent innovation capabilities, drive the development of related industries, and is of significant strategic importance in responding to the financial crisis, achieving stable growth, adjusting the economic structure, ensuring people's livelihoods, promoting stability, and ultimately enhancing the country's long-term competitiveness. Unlike conventional linear or physical obstruction-type detection systems that are easily bypassed, fiber optic sensor networks, through their three-dimensional collaborative sensing capabilities, act like a vast neural network. They can accurately detect anomalies and sounds throughout the entire deployment area by picking up voice signals from above ground, underground, and in space, conducting comprehensive environmental intrusion detection. Through intelligent behavior analysis and pattern recognition, they can accurately analyze and judge, eliminating potential false alarms and ensuring the system provides highly accurate notifications and alarms.
◇ Thin and transparent optical fibers can be attached to exhibits or concealed under display stands to provide direct and close protection for cultural relics. The physical and chemical properties of the optical fiber itself will not cause any damage to the cultural relics, achieving foolproof security monitoring.
◇ Optical fibers themselves can continuously monitor ambient temperature in real time over long distances in a distributed manner. As a safety monitoring component, optical fibers can also function as temperature alarm monitoring. When the temperature around a cultural relic exceeds the preservation conditions, the system can trigger an alarm.
◇ Optical fiber itself is a non-metallic passive device, resistant to lightning strikes and corrosion in natural environments. It is also unaffected by rain and snow, and can even be used in humid and aquatic environments. Furthermore, fiber optic sensors do not dissipate energy and do not become heat sources, making them suitable for flammable and explosive locations and meeting high-level fire protection requirements. This makes them ideal for important locations like museums and cultural institutions with high security levels and specific safety requirements.
◇ Fiber optic voice monitoring is unaffected by various electromagnetic interferences and does not produce the current and electrical signal noise common in electronic eavesdropping devices. It can synchronously reproduce the sounds of the monitoring scene with high fidelity and no time delay.
◇ Fiber optic monitoring technology does not conflict with existing video, infrared, and other systems, and can be used in conjunction with them to truly achieve the ability to touch, hear, and see.
Currently, a series of fiber optic monitoring technologies have emerged in China. Around 2000, research institutions such as Fudan University began developing fiber optic dynamic monitoring technology, and fiber optic detection and alarm products were put into trial use starting in 2005. Based on fiber optic dynamic sensing technology, a series of products, including fiber optic intrusion vibration detection, fiber optic voice monitoring, fiber optic line security monitoring, and fiber optic pipeline security monitoring, have been launched, possessing outstanding features.
These systems require the integration of multiple disciplines, including optoelectronics, materials science, physics, electronics, communications, and computer science, and generally necessitate research and development led by institutions with strong technical backgrounds. Currently, this technology, entirely independently developed in my country with an internationally unique technical approach, has filled a domestic gap and comprehensively surpassed similar foreign technologies. Many technological achievements have reached internationally leading levels both theoretically and technically. Various national ministries, science and technology departments in some provinces and cities, and certain industry regulatory agencies have begun to strongly advocate for the further development and application of this technology. Products using this technology were successfully deployed during the Olympic Games and the World Expo.
