Photonics Dictionary: M

In optical fiber, bends that are larger than microbends (see microbending), being visible. Generally they are caused by bending the cable beyond the specified bend radius. Light escaping at the bends...

A cable backbone used to interconnect local area networks at various sites (corporate offices and factories, for example) in a given region. Optical fiber is well-suited to the transmission of both...

In optical fiber, sharp but microscopic curvatures that create local axial displacements of a few microns and spatial wavelength displacements of a few millimeters. One frequent cause is longitudinal...

Mie scattering, named after the German physicist Gustav Mie, refers to the scattering of electromagnetic radiation (such as light) by spherical particles. Unlike Rayleigh scattering, which is...

A modulator is a device or component that modifies a carrier signal in order to encode information for transmission over a communication channel. The process of modulating involves varying one or...

A type of tubing used to protect optical fiber cables, consisting of a wire spiral of aluminum, galvanized steel or stainless steel, encased in a polyvinyl chloride or silicon rubber coating. These...

A fiber optic connector or splice that mates two multifiber cables, optically aligning all of the individual fibers simultaneously.

The combination of two or more signals for transmission along a single wire, path or carrier. In most optical communication systems this is referred to as wavelength division multiplexing, in which...