<title>Optical Fibres In The Industrial And Commercial Environment</title>

Abstract

There is considerable growth world-wide in the use of fibre optics in industry and commerce. One of the main reasons given by users so far for installing fibre optic systems is the complete freedom from electrical interference and resulting data integrity. The reliability of fibre optics has now been established by the telecommunication networks, but there is still conservatism amonast some potential industrial users. It is mainly the larger organisations in process control and users of large data processing organisations that are taking up fibre optics enthusiastically. The systems are now competitive with alternative systems and there is a large number of suppliers of components and subsystems world-wide. Integrated circuit signal processing is now being incorporated into transmitter and receiver housings and complete fibre optic local area networks are beginning to challenge brand name copper systems Lack of standards at present however, may present some difficulties for the potential user wishing to fabricate his own system. In the future, the development of integrated optic components will add another dimension to fibre optics in switching and signal processing and fibre optic sensors will challenge traditional transducers- The continued growth of fibre optics in industry and commerce seems well assured.© (1984) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.