Optical Fibre Communications

Tutorial on Devices

1
A

2
A

B
C

DE3

In fibre optic transmission lines, Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) and

Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) are widely used for high speed pointto-point transmission links.
(i)
Briefly explain multiplexing techniques used in SONET and SDH and
outline the difference between them.
(ii)
Explain the basic SONET transmission format with the aid of a
diagram.
(iii)
Calculate STS-1 (Synchronous Transport Signal-Level 1) if the
SONET frame has a 125-s duration.
(iv)
In SDH, what is basic rate for STM-1 (Synchronous Transport
Module-Level 1)?
One of the key characteristic of SONET and SDH is that they are usually
configured as a ring topology. Explain why this is the case and sketch the
following ring topologies:
(i)
Two-fibres, unidirectional path-switched ring network (two-fibre
UPSR).
(ii)
Two-fibres, bidirectional, line-switched ring (two-fibre BLSR).

Figure 2(A) shows a 44 crossbar switch with a wide-sense blocking

characteristics.
(i)
Describe what is meant by the wide-sense blocking.
(ii)
Use the attached figure for NxN switch to establish the following
connections (2-to-4), (3-to-2) and (4-to-3) without any blocking.
Name four applications of optical switches and briefly comment on their
speed.
Optical switches are based on the waveguide and/or free space technologies.
Name two of each and briefly comment on their overall characteristics.

3
A

An optical signal after propagating through a long length of fibre is amplified

using an optical amplifier before being detected by a typical photodetector.
The generated photocurrent is composed of a number of components, state
what they are and describe how they are generated.

Explain the concept of noise figure for an optical amplifier. Sketch a typical
optical amplifier power gain profile commenting on the relationship between
the gain and input power.

Figure 3(b) illustrates the physical components that make up a passive fibre
optic STAR LAN configuration. Each of N station access a common NN-port
optical star coupler that acts as a power sharing device. Each stations

transmitter couples its power into the common star mixer and each stations
receiver accesses that star mixer as well. The star coupler mixes all transmitted
signal power and divides it equally among all output ports. All
interconnections are made via optical couplers.
(i)
(ii)

Write an expression for the furthest separated stations on the bus by

tracing signal from transmitter at station 1 to the receiver at station N.
The link-power budget calls for the system gain to be greater or equal
to network loss. Using the data given in table 3(b) determine the
maximum number of station that the configuration can accommodate.

Input channels
1

In
p
ut
c
h
a
n
n
el
s

O
u
t
p
u
t
c
h
a
n
n
e
l
s
B
a
r
s

N X N matrix S/W

Output channels - Cross

Fig. 2(a)

Fig. 3(b)
Table 3(b)
Parameter

Values

Transmitted power before the connector

0 dBm

Minimum power required at the receiver

after the connector

1 x 10-6 W

The longest fibre length between stations

500 m

Fibre loss

3 dB/km

System operating margin

3 dB

Connector loos at Tx

1.258

Connector loos at Rx

0.5 dB

Connector loos at the couplers

1 dB

Coupler excess loss

4
A

The traffic within public optical communication network architecture can be

switched via circuit switching or packet switching. Illustrate both switching
techniques, with the aid of diagrams, and discuss the usage of bandwidth in
each of the techniques.
(i)
(ii)

Circuit switching
Packet Switching

Explain the need for multiplexing in optical communication systems. Briefly

describe the following multiplexing techniques:
(i)

Optical Time Division Multiplexing (OTDM)

(ii)

Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM)

C Using a diagram, describe which optical module in Wavelength Division

Multiplexing (WDM) systems contribute to generation of inter-channel crosstalk.

5
A Briefly describe the basic concept of Synchronous Optical Network
(SONET)/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) commenting on the followings:
(i) The basic transmission formats and transmission speed for OC-1, OC-3 and
OC-12.
(ii) Optical interfaces.
B Sketch a generic configuration of a larger SONET network composed of linear
chains and various types of interconnected rings. Your answer should include
three key features of the network.
C Which sublayer within the SONET or optical layer would be responsible for
handling the following functions?
(i)
A SONET path fails and the traffic must be switched over to another
path.
(ii)
Many SONET streams are to be multiplexed onto a higher-speed
stream and transmitted over a SONET link.
(iii)
A fibre fails and SONET line terminals at the end of the link re-route
all the traffic on the failed fibre onto another fibre.
6
A Using a diagram describe the two forms of crosstalk that arises in Wavelength
Division Multiplexing systems:

B Consider a star network that has 10 stations. Assuming the followings determine
the splitting loss and the power margin between the transmitter and the receiver.

Each station is located 500 m from the star coupler,

The excess loss = 0.75 dB,
The connector loss = 1.0 dB,
Fibre loss = 0.4 dB/km.

Solutions
1(A)
(i)
(ii)

The standard digital time-division multiplexing (TDM) scheme for high speed
communication is known as synchronous optical network (SONET) in North
America and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) in other parts of the world.
The basic transmission format for SONET:

B a sic S T S -N S O N E T fra m e

The first three columns comprise of transport overhead bytes that carry network management
information. The remaining 87 columns is called the synchronous payload envelope (SPE)
and carries user data plus nine bytes of path overhead (POH). The POH supports
performance monitoring by the end equipment, status, signal labelling, a tracing function, and
a user channel. The nice path-overhead bytes are always in a column and can be located
anywhere in the SPE.
For values fo N greater than 1, the columns of the freame become N times wider, with the
number of rows remaining at nine as shown above.
The line and section overhead bytes differ somewhat between SONET and SDH, so that a
translation mechanism is needed to interconnect them.
(iii)

STS-1=(90bytes/row)(9 rows/frame)(8 bits/byte)/125 s/frame) = 51.84 Mbps.

(iv)

STM-1 is equivalent to STS-3 which is 155.52 Mbps.

B
The ring architecture is done to create loop diversity for uninterrupted service protection
purposes in case of link or equipment failures. The SONET/SDH rings are commonly called
self-healing rings, since the traffic flowing along a certain path can automatically be switched
to an alternate or standby path following failure or degradation of the link segment.

Two-fibre UPSR

Two-fibre BLSR

2
(i) A connection path can always be found regardless of the current switching
configuration provided a good switching control algorithm is employed. No re-routing
of the existing connections
(ii)

Input channels

Input
chan
nels

4
Output channels

B
Any 4

Provisioning: Used inside optical cross connects to reconfigure them and set-up
new path. [1 - 10 msecs]

Protection Switching: To switch traffic from a primary fibre onto another fibre in the
case of a failure. [1 to 10 usecs]

Packet Switching: 53 byte packet @ 10 Gb/s. [1 nsecs]

External Modulation: To switch on-off a laser source at a very high speed. [10
psecs << bit duration]

Network performance monitoring

Reconfiguration and restoration: Fibre networks

C
Waveguide
Electro-optic effect: - Semiconductor optical amplifier, LiNbO, and InP. Are Fast,
Complex, Maturing and Lossy

Thermo-optic effect: - SiO2 / Si, and Polymer. Are slow, maturity, and reliable

Free Space: - Liquid crystal, Mechanical / fibre, Micro-optics (MEMs). These are: Slow, Low
loss & crosstalk and Inherently scalable
3

A
Noise components are: Signal-ASE beat noise, ASE-ASE beat noise generated by
the photodetector I P = E2(t), where E is the electric field composed of (Isignal + IASE)2. Thus
resulting in three terms, signal, signal-ASE and ASE-ASE
Signal dependent shot noise
Dark current: When there is no optical signal, due to random fluctuation of electrons
Thermal noise
Amplifier noise
B

NF defined as the SNRi/SNRo

+10 dBm

ASE spectrum when no input signal is

present

Amplified signal spectrum

(input signal saturates the optical amplifier)
+ ASE
-40 dBm
1575 nm

1525 nm

Gain as the input power .

Higher input signal power requires loer gain and wider bandwidth, and vice versa
The power budget between the two furthest stations is:

Pt Pr M >= (lct + 2lc +lcr) +Lstar + Dlf.

For a star coupler, coupling ratio CR = 1/N, where N is the number of stations.
Pr in dBm = 10 log (1uW/1 mW) = -30 dBm
The coupler loss Lstar = le =10 log (1/CR) = le + 10 log (N).
The number station Log N = [Pt Pr M lct 2lc lc Le Dlf.]10
Log N = [0 (-30) 3 1 2 (1) 0.5 5 0.5(3) ] / 10 = 1.7
Thus N = 1 x 101.7 = 50

Electrical control

Optical
input

Optical
output

4
A

(i)

CR = Po2 / Po2 + Po1 = 0.3Pi1/ (0.30 +0.25)Pi1 = 0.45, i.e. 45%.

(ii)

EL = 10 Log10[Pi1 / Po2 + Po1 ] = 10 Log10[Pi1 / (0.30 +0.25)Pi1]

= 10 Log10[1.82] = 2.6 dB.

Circuit switching
Circuit-switched connections provides guaranteed amount of bandwidth.
The bandwidths are equally divided among all the channels, regardless of usage and
users requirements.

Packet switching
Packet switching uses statistical multiplexing to optimise the usage of bandwidth for
bursty traffic.
The bandwidths are divided among all the channels based on statistical information of
the users requirements.

OTDM:

Multiplexing:
Most users need relatively low bandwidth.
Transmission is more economical at higher bandwidth over a single fibre.
So we need the ability to combine different channels into one to create larger
bandwidths.
We also need to separate the channels when required.

WDM:

5
A

OTDM is the same as its electrical counterpart, TDM, where the time is being sliced
to accommodate multiple incoming channels and produce on high bit rate output
stream.
This technique typically interleaves the lower-speed streams to obtain the higher
speed stream based on time.
Normally a single fixed time slot is pre-allocated to one channel, however one
channel can be allocated to more than one time slot if the traffic in that particular
channel is high.
For example 64 x 155 Mbps streams may be multiplexed into a single 10 Gbps.
When multiplexing and demultiplexing is done in the optical domain, the technique is
known as optical time division multiplexing (OTDM).

Another way to increase capacity is using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM).

Essentially WDM is the same as frequency division multiplexing (FDM), where each
incoming channel is multiplexed into different output wavelengths.
WDM provides virtual fibres, making a single fibre look like multiple virtual fibres.

The standard digital time-division multiplexing (TDM) scheme for high speed
communication is known as synchronous optical network (SONET) in North America and
synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) in other parts of the world.
The basic transmission format for SONET:

B a s ic S T S - N S O N E T fr a m e

The transmission speed:

SONET Level

Electrical Level

Line Rate (Mbps)

SDH
Equivalent
OC-1
STS-1
51.84
OC-3
STS-3
155.52
STM-1
OC-12
STS-12
622.08
STM-4
OC-24
STS-24
1244.16
STM-8
OC-48
STS-48
2488.32
STM-16
OC-96
STS-96
4976.64
STM-32
OC-192
STS-192
9953.28
STM-64
(ii) To ensure interconnection compatibility between equipment from different manufacturers,
the SONET and SDH specifications provide details for optical source characteristics, the
receiver sensitivity, and transmission distances for various types of fibres.
The optical fibres falls into three catogories and operational windows:
1. Graded-index multimode in the 1310nm window.
2. Conventional non-dispersion-shifted single-mode in the 1310nm and 1550nm
windows.
3. Dispersion-shifted single-mode in the 1550nm window.
B

G e n e ric S O N E T n e tw o rk

Each individual rings has its own failure recovery mechanism.

Each individual rings has SONET/SDH network management procedures.
OC-192 could be a large national backbone network with a number of OC-48 rings.
OC-48 rings can have lower capacity OC-12 or OC-3 rings for equipment with extremely wide
range of rates and sizes.
C
(i) Optical channel layer and/or SONET path layer.
(ii) This would be handled by the SONET line layer, not any of the optical layers.
(iii) Again this would be done by the SONET section layer. However, we may have OEOs
within the optical layer itself to regenerate the signal on a wavelength-by-wavelength basis
if we have exhausted the optical system link budget. In this case, the OEOs may monitor
the error rate as well, and this function would be part of the optical channel layer.

Crosstalk

6
A
Inter-channel crosstalk:
Due to optical filter, demultiplexers.
Intra-channel crosstalk
Due to reflection.

DEMUX
1 2

1 2

1 2

DEMUX
1

MUX

2
1

1
1
Crosstalk

B
The power balance equation is:

PS PR = Lexcess + (2 L) + 2 Lconnector + Lsplit

where L is the distance between station and the star coupler, is the fibre loss.
The splitting loss :

Lsplit = 10 Log10 (1 / N )
= 10 Log10 (1 / 10)
= 10 dB
Thus

PS PR = [0.75 + 0.4(1.0) + 10]

= 13.2 dB