General school certificate in Physics or Physical science. In the UK appropriate pre-requisite qualifications include General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) in Physics.

After completing this course a trainee will be able to explain the basic principles of optical fibre transmission, describe the main components of optical links, appreciate the hazards of optical sources, and be able to calculate the power budget of a link.

At the end of this course, the trainee will be able to:

Describe the basic structure of an optical fibre and explain how infrared energy is propagated down the core of a fibre.

Describe the causes and effect of dispersion.

Describe the structure of different types of glass fibre (including multimode and single mode fibres) and compare their characteristics.

Describe the features, characteristics and uses of different types of fibre connection including mechanical splices, demountable connectors and fusion splices.

Describe the components of an optical link including lasers and Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and safety issues relating to these sources, and the role of Optical Line

Terminating Equipment (OLTE), regenerators and optical amplifiers.

Explain the main causes of optical loss in a fibre transmission system and discuss methods of minimising those losses.

Explain the significance of a "power budget " for an optical link, explain the meaning of the terms: receiver sensitivity, launched power, system margin and dispersion penalty and calculate the maximum length of a link for a given set of link parameters.

Number of chapters: 9 Study time: 8 hours