Voice communication with infrared light and fibre optics

Infrared Communication Everyone knows the importance of radio silence to avoid detection. Modern warships have powerful computers that exchange data among ships and aircraft, but are unable to secretly communicate in a task force unless they use the crude method of flashing Morse code with signal lights or flags. A major breakthrough will occur when navies discover infrared communications. This technology has been around for decades; it's how your television remote control works. In recent years, companies such as DataSoft have developed infrared computer networks that allow mobile computers in factories and laboratories to exchange data up to 25 meters away. This technology can be used for short-range warship, aircraft, and armored vehicle communications. Each will have several emitters working like invisible strobe lights and several receivers. More power should allow ranges of up to 1000 meters, less in bad weather. However, this

limited range also prevents enemy intercepts. Voice communications can be instantly digitized, sent as infrared light, and converted back into voice, so users can talk over the stealthy "IR net." Combat plans will no longer include rules for "radio silence" but rules for "IR comm only."

IR data transmission is also employed in short-range communication among computer peripherals and personal digital assistants.

Infrared communications are useful for indoor use in areas of high population density. IR does not penetrate walls and so does not interfere with other devices in adjoining rooms. Infrared is the most common way for remote controls to command appliances.

Infrared emitters and detectors capable of highspeed operation are available at low cost. The infrared spectral region offers a virtually unlimited bandwidth that is unregulated worldwide. Infrared

and visible light are close together in wavelength, and they exhibit qualitatively similar behavior. Both are absorbed by dark objects, diffusely reflected by light-colored objects, and directionally reflected from shiny surfaces. Both types of light penetrate through glass, but not through walls or other opaque barriers, so that infrared transmissions are confined to the room in which they originate. This signal confinement makes it easy to secure transmissions against casual eavesdropping, and it prevents interference between links operating in different rooms.

Fibre Optics Communication

Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of light through anoptical fiber. The light forms an electromagnetic carrier wave that is modulated to carry information. First developed in the 1970s, fiber-optic communication systems have revolutionized the telecommunications industry. Because of its advantages over electrical transmission, optical fibers have largely replaced

copper wire communications in core networks in the developed world. The process of communicating using fiber-optics involves the following basic steps: Creating the optical signal involving the use of a transmitter, relaying the signal along the fiber, ensuring that the signal does not become too distorted or weak, receiving the optical signal, and converting it into an electrical signal.

Optical fiber is used by many telecommunications companies to transmit telephone signals, Internet communication, and cable television signals. Comparison with electrical transmission The choice between optical fiber and electrical (or copper) transmission for a particular system is made based on a number of trade-offs. Optical fiber is generally chosen for systems requiring higher bandwidth or spanning longer distances than electrical cabling can accommodate. The main benefits of fiber are its exceptionally low loss (allowing long distances between

amplifiers/repeaters), its absence of ground currents and other parasite signal and power issues common to long parallel electric conductor runs (due to its reliance on light rather than electricity for transmission, and the dielectric nature of fiber optic), and its inherently high data-carrying capacity. Thousands of electrical links would be required to replace a single high bandwidth fiber cable.