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History :Some of the historical developments in the field of communication that led to
present day optical fiber communication are listed below:
Optical fiber communication methods(special interest):
Different generation of optical fiber communication: The below table shows repeater
spacing needed as function of bitrate at different wavelengths.
General Systems
Information source:This can be any source like text ,voice ,video. But
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each source differ with each other with respect to bitrate etc.
If we correlate the above two block diagram ,we observe that optical fiber system additionally consists
of optical source,e.g LED or LASER for conversion from electrical form to optical form. Optical
detector (photo diode e.g:avalanche or pin ) for conversion from optical form to electrical form.
At destination side the recovered signal is further processed to bring it back to its base band form.
System reliability & Ease of maintenance – Low loss property of O.F results in
less requirement of repeaters(intermediate), Lifetime of optical fiber (predicted)
≈ 20-30yrs. Thus, these two factors tend to reduce time & cost.
Disadvantages:
Applications:
δP n √ n 2 cos 2 θ1 −1
tan( )=
2 sin θ 1
Acceptance Angle(θa): For the ray to be propagated,along the length of the fiber,it should enter
into total internal reflection phenomenen.But this can be accomplished by launching the ray
within the half conical angle to the fiber axis.This angle is called as Acceptance angle(θa ).
Numerical aperture (N.A): This gives interrelation between acceptance angle & R.I. of three
media (viz : core, cladding and air)
N.A indicates light gathering capability of a fiber. It is used to calculate source fiber optical
power coupling efficiency.
π
Θ2 + φ + =π
2
π
Θ2 = -φ
2
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π
Consider ∆ ABC => θ2= -φ , here φ > φc (critical angle)
2
Eq(1) becomes
n0sinθ1=n1(1-sin2θ)1/2 ……….(2)
Ex. A silica fiber with core diameter large enough to be considered by ray theory analysis has a
core R.I 1.5 & clad R.I = 1.47. Determine critical angle,NA for the fiber ,Acceptance angle in
air for the fiber.
Skew Rays :
Don’t cut across the fiber axis,as compared to meridional rays. Traces a helical path in
fiber.
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-> angle between proj of the ray (in two dimensions) & rad of fiber core.
Helical path traced gives a direction change of 2γ at each reflection.
Point of emergence (from fiber) in air depends upon the no. of reflection, the rays
undergo rather than input condition to fiber (meridional ray).
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Consider limiting case of Total internal reflection : φ becomes equal to the critical angle
φ c for the core–cladding interface , Using sin φ c = n 2 /n 1 .
n cosin θa = n 1 sin θ
where θ as represents the maximum input angle or acceptance angle for skew rays.
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Cylindrical Fiber :
At Core clad interface, coupling of electric and magnetic field component may results in
hybrid mode creation depending upon whether E field is greater or H field (i.e. HE or
EH) for that mode
Mode- Mode refers to the no. of paths for the light rays within the cable.
Modes TE(Ez=0),TM(Hz=0) – occurs due to meridional rays. Order of the mode is
equal to the no. of field zeros across the guide. Order of the mode also depends upon the
angle that the ray congruence corresponding to this mode makes with axis of fiber.
Hybrid modes (Ez = Hz ≠ 0) Also present in cylindrical waveguide(due to skew rays)
Each mode is a pattern of electric and magnetic field distribution that is repeated along
the fiber at equal interval
W.P may change propagation characteristics of the fiber
Depending upon particular perturbation, coupling of energy from one mode to another
may take place.
2.Fiber profiles
n(r)= {
n 1 r <a ( core )
n2 r ≥ a ( clad )
If a mode is away from its fc,then energy will be concentrated more in core. At fc, field
penetrates into clad relative amount of power flow in core & clad in axial direction( ez)
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Ex. Graded index fiber with a parabolic R.I profile has a dr = 50μm. Fiber has a NA=0.2.
Estimate total no. of guided modes propagating in the fiber if λ=1μm.
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Problem: A step index fiber(multimode) with NA=20m supports 1000 modes at λ= 850nm.
Calculate, diameter of core and how many modes fiber supports at λ=1320nm & λ= 1550nm.
Ex. Determine λc for step index fiber to exhibit single mode when R.I(core)=1.46,
r(core)=4.5μm,with relative R.I difference 0.25%.
Answer. λc = 1.21μm
For Gaussian distribution the MFD is given by the ‘1/e2’ width of the optical fiber. (1/e =
0.37, 1/e2 = 0.135)
MFD is used to predict fiber properties. Ex: Splice loss, bending loss, cutoff wavelength
‘e’,waveguide dispersion.
MFD=
3.Fiber Material:This is third type of fiber classification. This is based on type of material used
while during manufacture of the fiber. That is wether glass,plastic or any other specific
technique used while during manufacture of the fiber.ex: Photonic Crystal Fiber
Glass Fibers:
Incorporating certain rare earth elements into Silica, allow to perform amplification,
attenuation & phase retardation, ionic concentration of rare earth elements are low, this
avoids clustering effects, which is necessary for amplification.
Ex. Erbium & Neodymium , Thulium
Types:
i. Index Guiding
ii. Photonic Bandgap
Cable structure: Maximum allowable axial load, determines the length of cable that can be
reliably installed.
Ex. In copper cables the wires themselves are principal load-bearing members of the cable
and elongation of >20% is possible without fracture. On the other hand, extremely strong
optical fiber tends to break at 4% elongation. Steel wires can be used as a strength member for
optical fiber cables. Plastic strength synthetic yarns are also used. Since they can avoid the
effects of electromagnetic induction & also weight.
Tight-Buffered design:
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Each fiber is individually encapsulated within its own 900μm diameter plastic buffer
structure. Buffer is nearly 4 times the diameter and 5 times the thickness of 250μm
protective coating material.
Significance: The construction feature contributes to the excellent moisture and
temperature performance.
These cables are normally exposed to high water pressure. Therefore, these cables have
various water blocking layers.
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Specialty Fibers:
Specialty fibers are designed to interact with light and theory manipulate or control
some characteristics of an optical signal.
ii. Optical devices like light transmitter, light signal modulators, optical receiver, light
couplers and splitters use the specialty fibers.
Erbium-Doped Fiber:
Photosensitive Fiber: Here R.I changes when exposed to UV light. The required
sensitivity can be provided by doping the fiber with Ge or B ions.
Application: Used to create fiber Bragg grating (for light coupling mechanisms for
pump laser, optical filters)
Termination fibers: Optical device with multiple parts will have one or more unused open
branches. Back reflection from these parts can cause instabilities and need to be suppressed.
Termination fibers can be used for this purpose.
Ex. A termination that has a return loss of more than 65dB can be achieved by splicing about
25cm of a termination fiber onto the end of unused fiber branches.
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Attenuation and bandwidth(BW) are the two main characteristics which affect the
performance of optical fibers.
Little earlier than 1970,an optical fiber with an attenuation< 20dBkm-1 was known.
Attenuation:
This determines the “The Maximum transmission distance” prior to signal restoration(or
reproduced and amplified).Figure above shows attenuation variation as function of wavelength
and also photon energy. It is clear from graph that low and wavelengths (say .7um< and above
2um ) attenuation is high. So care should be taken while selecting wavelength for a particular
task.
ΑdB=10/Llog10(Pi/Po)
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Ex:When mean optical power into an 8km length of fiber is 12µW.The mean optical power at
the fiber o/p is 3µW.
Determine:
(a) Overall signal attenuation(in dB) through the fibers assuming there are no fiber
connectors(splices).
(c) Overall signal attenuation for a 10Km optical link using the same fiber with splices at
1Km interval,each giving an attenuation o 1dB.
(a) α=10log10Pi/Po=16dB
(b)
αdB=16/8=2dBKm-1
The link also has nine splices(at 1Km intervals) each with an attenuation of 1dB.Therefore
Loss due to splices=1dB*9=9dB
signal attenuation=20+9=29dB.
Pi/Po=1029/10=794.3
1. Material composition
2. Fabrication process.
Material absorption is a loss mechanism attributed to the material composition and the fabri-
cation process , which results in the dissipation of some of the transmitted optical power as heat
in the waveguide.Glass has little intrinsic absorption due to its basic material structure in the
near-infrared region as shown in figure.
(1) Intrinsic Absorption:Due to interaction with one or more of the major components.
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Strong absorption band occurs due to oscillations of structure units Impurities viz:Si-
O(λ=9.2μm),P-O(8.1 μm)
Causes transfer of sum or all of optical power contained within one propagating mode to
another mode .
1.Rayleigh 2.Mie
2.Mie:This occurs due to non perfect cylindrical structure in optical fiber. i.e. irregularities in
core cladding interface. Depending upon the fiber material,design & manufacturing process,
Mie scattering can cause significant losses.
Non homogeneousness in the fiber is a great concern .This can be can be eliminated by:
1.Removing imperfections.
1.Stimulated Brillouin scattering(SBS) :It can be regarded as the modulation of light through
thermal molecular vibrations within the fiber. The scattered light appears as upper and lower
sidebands which are separated from the incident light by the modulation frequency.But it is is
only significant above a threshold power density.Threshold power P B is given by:
P B = 4.4 × 10 −3 d 2 λ2 α db ν watts
2.Raman scattering:Similar to SBS,But SRS can occur in both the forward and backward
directions in an optical fiber.The threshold optical power is given by:
P R = 5.9 × 10 −2 d 2 λα db watts
Both occurs usually at high optical power densities in long single-mode fibers.
Example :
Solution: The Rayleigh scattering coefficient may be obtained from Eq.1 for each wavelength.
However, the only variable in each case is the wavelength, and therefore the constant of
proportionality of Eq. (1) applies in all cases. Hence:
γ R = 8 π 3 n 8 p 2 β c KT F / 3 λ 4 ------------------------------------1
= 1.895 × 10 −28 /λ 4
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= 1.199 × 10 -3
The transmission loss factor for 1 kilometer of fiber may be obtained using
= 0.301
obtained as
= 5.2 dB km −−1.
γ R =1.895 × 10 −28
= 0.827
Bend loss
Therefore part of mode in the cladding needs to travel faster than velocity of light in
core medium.
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Two types:
c1,c2-constant,independent of R
Rc=9μm
λc=2πan1(2∆)1/2/2.405=1.214μm
Rc=7.77μm
Dispersion:”Broadening of transmitted light pulses as they traverse through along the channel.”
Two types:
1.Intermodal:Occurs only in multimode fiber. This occurs due to modal delays contributed by
each mode.
2.Intramodal:(chromatic) modal delay is result of each mode having different value of group
velocity at single frequency,occurs only in single mode.
Btmax =B (RZ)
Ex:A multimode graded index fiber exhibit total pulse broadening of 0.1μs over
distance=15km. Estimate
c)bandwidth-length product
a)Bt=1/2T=1/(2*10-6)=5MHz
c)BtL=5*15=75MHz km
Each optical source emits a band frequencies, this may lead to propagation delay
difference between the different spectral components.
There are wo types Intra model dispersion:1) Material dispersion 2) Waveguide dispersion
1) Material dispersion : This results from the different group velocities of the various spectral
components launched into the fiber from the optical source.Phase velocity of a plane wave
propagating in dielectric medium varies nonlinearly with respect to wavelength.
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Phase velocity of a wave is the rate at which the phase of the wave propagates in
space(vp=λ/ T).The red and green dots in figure below demonstrate the variation in phase of
a wave.
Group delay is the time delay of the amplitude envelope of the various sinusoidal
component of a signal through a device under test, and is a function of frequency
for each component. All frequency components of a signal are delayed when
passed through a device such as an amplifier, a loudspeaker, or propagating
through space or a medium, such as air. This signal delay will be different for the
various frequencies unless the device has the property of being linear phase.
A material is said to exhibit material dispersion when the second order differential of the
refractive index with respect to wavelength is not zero (i.e.d²n/dλ²≠ 0).
In case of Polarization mode dispersion, light energy confines into two orthogonal
polarization state ( or modes ) as shown in figure. As fiber material is non uniform through out.
Each mode will travel at slightly different velocity thereby causing dispersion.
Wave guide dispersion : Waveguide of optical fiber also create intra modal dispersion .
Propagating power in Cladd travel faster than the part in core thereby causing
mismatch in phase when both part reaches the other end of fiber.
Intermodal Dispersion (ID):ID occurs due to propagation delay differences between modes
within a multimode fibers. Purely singly mode fiber doesn't exhibit intermodal dispersion
Multimode step index fiber: Delay differences between the axial ray and meridional ray gives
an estimation of pulse broadening ( due to intermodal dispersion )
* Both traveling with same velocity.
Ex:A 6Km optical link consists of multimode fiber (step index) with RIcore=1.5,realtive RI
difference of 1% estimate
(a)Delay difference between fastest & slowest mode of fiber o/p.
(b)Also determine rms pulse broadening.
An LED operating at λ=850nm hs a spectral width of 45nm.What is pulse spreading in ns/Km
due to material dispersion
Dmat=-λ/c d2n/dλ2, for LED (a)λ=850nm,│d2n/dλ2│=0.025
M=1/c λ│λ 2d2n/dλ2│=9.8ps/nm/Km,σm= 4.5*1*9.8=441ps/Km
Ex:A multimode step index fiber has a numerical aperture of 0.3 and a core refractive
index of 1.45. The material dispersion parameter for the fiber is 250 ps nm −1 km −l
which makes material dispersion the totally dominating chromatic dispersion mech-
anism. Estimate (a) the total rms pulse broadening per kilometer when the fiber is
used with an LED source of rms spectral width 50 nm and (b) the corresponding
Solution: (a) The rms pulse broadening per kilometer due to material dispersion
-----------------------------(1)
The rms pulse broadening per kilometer due to intermodal dispersion for the step
-------------2
The total rms pulse broadening per kilometer may be obtained using Eq.3
---------------------------------3
(b) The bandwidth–length product may be estimated from the relationship given
in Eq.4
---------------------4
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Figure1a: Figure1b
Figure1a shows Resultant free elect-hole moves under the influence of external electric field.
* Semiconductors are of two types , depending upon band gap energy as the function of
momentum(K).