What is the maximum distance that a fiber optic cable can transmit a signal?

Question

or is there a limit?

Answer 1

The maximum distance for single-mode installations is determined by the amount of light loss in the fiber path. Good-quality single-mode fiber with very few splices can carry an OC-12c/STM-4 signal 50 miles (80 kilometers) or more. Good-quality multimode fiber can carry the signal up to 1640 feet (500 meters). If your environment requires the signal to travel close to the typical maximum distance, use an optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR) to measure the power loss.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Well bandwidth of a channel means that the range of frequencies that are passed "without attenuation" through the channel. Imagine your auditory system as a channel. We humans can only "hear" signals of 20 Hz - 20000 Hz, any other signals of higher or lower frequencies are not "passed" through our auditory system. Smae goes for our vision as well, we can only "see" signals of ceratin frequency range. In a an optical fiber that would correspond to lights of certain frequency ranges that pass through with minumum attenuation.

Answer 3

There is no limit to it. But as the distance increases the attenuation and propogation losses increases,thereby decreasing signal to noise ratio and hene its performance.
And the cost is also a major concern.

But with the use of repeaters it is possible to go to any distance!

Answer 4

Actually it's really not that easy. There is a limit but it depends on a great number of factors like wavelength, transmission frequency, glass quality, number of repeaters etc. Look at wikipedia for more info...