I often see netizens asking: What is the difference between optical fiber and optical cable? The reason why many netizens have such questions is that optical fibers and optical cables are easy to confuse. Some people even mistake the cable and the optical cable. We will introduce the difference between optical cable and cable in another article. Here we will first introduce the difference between optical fiber and optical cable.

Strictly speaking, optical fiber and optical cable are two different things, but in actual life, many people still confuse the two. In order to understand the difference between optical fiber and optical cable more intuitively, let's look at a picture first.

What is the difference between optical cable and optical fiber

1. Optical fiber is a thin and soft medium for transmitting light beams. Most optical fibers must be covered with several layers of protective structure before use. The covered cable is called an optical cable. Therefore, the optical fiber is the core part of the optical cable, and the optical fiber constitutes the optical cable through the protection of certain components and additional protective layers.

The protective structure of the outer layer of the optical fiber can prevent damage to the optical fiber by the surrounding environment. Optical cable includes optical fiber, buffer layer and coating. Optical fiber is similar to coaxial cable, except that there is no mesh shield. At its center is the glass core through which light propagates.

2. Optical cable: mainly composed of optical fiber (glass filament as thin as a hair), plastic protective cover and plastic skin. There is no gold, silver, copper, aluminum and other metals in the optical cable, and generally has no recycling value. An optical fiber cable is a communication line in which a certain number of optical fibers form a cable core in a certain manner, and some of them are wrapped with a sheath or an outer sheath to achieve optical signal transmission. In other words, the optical cable is formed by optical fiber (optical transmission carrier) through a certain process.

Optical fibers are usually bundled together and protected by a casing. The core is usually made of quartz glass, which is a double-layer concentric cylinder with a small cross-sectional area. Because of its fragile texture, it needs a protective layer. This is the difference between them.

In summary, we can simply understand that the optical fiber is the core part of the optical cable. After reading the difference between optical fiber and optical cable introduced by the editor, I hope everyone will not mistake optical fiber and optical cable.