Optical Communication and

Networks
Unit 1
Fiber Optic Systems
 Text Book
• Gerd Keiser, “Optical Fiber Communications”
McGraw-Hill, 4th Edition, 2008
 Evolution of Fiber Optic
Communication
• Ever since ancient times, people had a principal need to
communicate

• This need created interests in devising commn. Systems

• Optical commn. System is one such system

• Earliest known optical commn. used fire-signal (used by

Greeks in 8th century BC)

– Ex.: sending alarms, calls for help, announcement of certain events

 Evolution of Fiber Optic
Communication…
• However improvements were not pursued actively
because of technology limitations

– Speed (how fast sender can move their hands)

– Receiver is the error prone human eye
– Line of transmission paths were required
– Atmospheric effectssuch as fog,rain made path unreliable

• Thus it turned out to be courier over road is faster,

more efficient and more reliable
 Evolution of Fiber Optic
Communication…
• 1837(telegraph, Samuel F.B.Morse) era of electrical commn. Started
– Letters & numbers coded by series of dots and dashes
– Encoded symbols were sent as electrical pulses over cu wire at a rate of 10 pulses/sec.

• 1874(Baudot) enabled the information speeds to increase to

about 120 bits/sec. but required skilled operator

• 1876(telephone, A.G.Bell) device could transmit entire voice signal in

analog form didn’t require any expertice to use.

• Both telegraph & telephone signals were sent using a

baseband transmission mode
 Evolution of Fiber Optic
Communication…
• In the ensuing years more sophisticated, reliable and large
capacity systems were deployed.

• The motivation behind each new system were:

– To improve the transmission fidelity

– To increase the data rate or capacity of a commn. Link
– To increase the repeaterless transmission distance

• These activities led to the birth of wide variety of commn.

systems
 Evolution of Fiber Optic
Communication…
• No significant advances for optical commn. appeared until

– the invention of LASER in early 1960s and

– a series of technology developments related to optical fiber around 1970

• These events led to practical lightwave transmission system worldwide in

1978

• These systems operate in near-infrared region of EM spectrum and uses

optical fibers as transmission medium
 Evolution of Fiber Optic
Communication…
• Inception 1974

• Transmission capacity (BL) ↑ 10 fold every four years

• Growth is due to advancement in several major technologies

(i) optical fiber

(ii) light sources

(iii)photo detectors

(iv)optical amplifiers
 First Generation
• First generation links operated around 850 nm

• Silica fibers (multimode),GaAs based source,Si photodetector

• Demonstrated in 1977 at Los Angles Chicago

Similarly in Europe & Japan

• 45 – 140 Mbps 10 Km

• Limitation: Intermodal dispersion & fiber loss

 Second Generation
• Sources & detectors operated at 1310 nm (zero dispersion)

• Resulted in ↑ in repeaterless transmission distance

• Intercity applns. – used multimode fiber

later in 1984 – single mode fibers

• Bit rates: 155 & 622 Mbps (in some cases 2.5 Gbps)

• Repeater spacing of 40Km

• In LAN both MM & SM at 1310 used

10 – 100 Mbps, 500m – 10s 0f Km
 Third Generation
• Systems operating at 1550 nm (lowest attn.)

• Dispersion minimized through DSF

• Routine traffic : 2.5Gbps over 90Km

• Advances in high quality laser(1996) & detectors

led to single-wavelength tr.capacity of
10Gbps (OC-192)
 Fourth Generation

• Introduction of optical amplifiers(1989)

- Major boost to fiber transmission capacity

• Same time period, transmission using soliton

signals were demonstrated

• Soliton at rates of 10 Gbps – sent over 12,200

km
 Fifth Generation

• EDFA & WDM used to boost capacity levels of

40-160 Gbps and

• Repeaterless distance:
24000Km -35000Km

• Operating wavelength : 1530 to 1570nm

 Recent

• Link operating at 40 Gbps were installed in

2005
• Over to 100Gbps in 2009 and field trials of 160
Gbps long-distance transmission systems were
tested successfully.
• 73.7 Tbps (Terabits per second) in 2013
• Presently around 100 Pbps (petabits per
second)…
Fiber Optic Communication
Technology
Major elements of an optical fiber link
 ADVANTAGES OF OPTICAL FIBERS
1. VERY HIGH INFORMATION CARRYING CAPACITY.
2. LESS ATTENUATION (order of 0.2 db/km)
3. SMALL IN DIAMETER AND SIZE & LIGHT WEIGHT
4. LOW COST AS COMPARED TO COPPER (as glass is made from sand..the
raw material used to make OF is free….)
5. GREATER SAFETY AND IMMUNE TO EMI & RFI, MOISTURE &
COROSSION
6. FLEXIBLE AND EASY TO INSTALL IN TIGHT CONDUITS
7. ZERO RESALE VALUE (so theft is less)
8. IS DILECTRIC IN NATURE SO CAN BE LAID IN ELECTICALLY
SENSITIVE SURROUNDINGS
9. DIFFICULT TO TAP FIBERS, SO SECURE
10. NO CROSS TALK AND DISTURBANCES
 Disadvantages
– Economical only when the bandwidth is fully
utilised
– High cost of installation
– A lot of hardware at the moment is not compatible
with fibre optic cables, they need to be adapted in
order to make use of them.
 Optical Communication Systems
• Digital fiber optic (SONET) systems
• Microwave (analog) fiber optic (MFO) Systems
• Radio over fiber systems for wireless
communications (ROF)
• Line of sight Infrared fixed wireless systems
(Free Space Optics)
• Diffused infrared indoor wireless systems
Digital Fiber Optic Systems
(SONET/SDH)

High speed inter-city, intra-city, WAN

type network with well defined
standards and bit rates up 6.4 Tb/s
(Nortel Networks OPTera 5000)
 Examples of information rates for some
typical services
Type of service Data rate
Video on demand 1.5 to 6 Mbps
Video games 1 to 2 Mbps
Remote education 1.5 to 3 Mbps
Electronic shopping 1.5 to 6 Mbps
Data transfer or telecommuting 1 to 3 Mbps
Video conferencing 0.384 to 2 Mbps
Voice (single telephone channel) 33.6 to 56 kbps
 Synchronous Optical Networks
• SONET is the TDM optical network
standard for North America (called SDH in
the rest of the world)
• We focus on the physical layer
• STS-1, Synchronous Transport Signal
consists of 810 bytes over 125 us
• 27 bytes carry overhead information
• Remaining 783 bytes: Synchronous
Payload Envelope
 SONET/SDH Bit Rates
SONET Bit Rate (Mbps) SDH
OC-1 51.84 -
OC-3 155.52 STM-1
OC-12 622.08 STM-4
OC-24 1244.16 STM-8
OC-48 2488.32 STM-16
OC-96 4976.64 STM-32
OC-192 9953.28 STM-64
Microwave Fiber Optic (MFO)
Analog Systems

Conventionally used for CATV

Distribution (Fiber-Coax Systems)
and recently for multimedia delivery
via high-speed internet cable
modems
 Analog Systems
• Modulating signal is analog (RF)
• Several RF carriers can be transmitted
over a single fiber in FDM manner
called Sub Carrier Multiplexing
• Each RF Carrier is an independent
communication channel
– Ex: CATV Systems
• Linearity is the biggest concern
Sub-Carrier Multiplexing
Hybrid/Fiber Coax (HFC) TV Networks
Public Switched Telephone Network
(PSTN)
Multimedia over Fiber
(Synch. Optical Network)
Optical Access Network
Radio over Fiber (ROF) for
Wireless Systems

A subset of MFO systems – However,

the microwave signal is transmitted
into the free-space to give wireless
access and mobility. Gives unique
challenges.
The Technology
 RAP RAP RAP
Fiber Distribution
RT

Consistent
High
Data Rate
Everywhere

Dramatic Increase in Capacity !!

 Multi Standard Fiber-Wireless
Y
Central Radio over Fiber (ROF)
Base RAP
Station (Simple)
Up/Down links

Y
RAP 802.11 voice
Y
RAP

Single ROF link can support voice and Micro

Cell
data simultaneously
 WDM concepts (1970s/1990s)

• The N independent optically formatted

information streams,

• each transmitting at a slightly different

wavelength are combined by means of an
optical multiplexer and

• sent over the same fiber.

 Optical Spectral Bands

O- original
E- Extended
S- Short
C- Conventional
L- Long
U- Ultra-long
 Standards for Optical Fiber
Communications
• Primary Standards
– Fundamental Physical parameters
• Attenuation, bandwidth, operational characteristics of fibers,
Optical power levels and spectral widths
– NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology,
USA)
– NPL (national Physical Laboratory, UK
– PTB (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Germany)
• Component testing standards
• System standards
 Component testing standards
• Tests for fiber optic component performance
• Establish equipment calibration procedures
• Organizations involved
– TIA with EIA
– ITU-T
– IEC
• FOTP standards
– FOTP-60
– TIA/EIA-455-60-1997..
 System standards
• Measurement methods for links and networks
• Organizations
– ANSI
– IEEE
– ITU-T
• G-series G.650 includes
– Fiber cables, optical amplifiers, wavelength
multilexing, OTN, PON
• L series includes
– Construction, installation, maintenance, supportt,
monitoring and testing of cable.
 Performance Characteristics
• Channel Capacity
– The maximum rate at which data can be sent
across a channel from message source to the user
destination.
– From Shannon capacity theorem
• If a channel has a bandwidth, B, then the maximum
information-transmission capacity, C, of that channel in
bps is C=Blog2(1+S/N) where S and N are the average
signal and noise powers
– Find C for 1MHz noisy channel with S/N = 1