EEE 435

Optical Communications

Dr. Md. Forkan Uddin

Proessor
Dept. of EEE, BUET

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 Transmission Characteristics of Fiber
 Attenuation
 Dispersion
 Nonlinear effects
 Polarization

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 Attenuation
 Attenuation has proved to be one of the most important
factors in bringing about their wide acceptance in
telecommunications
 Usually expressed in the logarithmic unit of the decibel
 Ratio of the input (transmitted) optical power Pi to the output
(received) optical power Po

 If αdB is the signal attenuation per unit length in decibels and L

is the fiber length
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 Problem

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 Why Attenuation Occurs in Fiber?
 Absorption: Intrinsic and extrinsic
 Scattering:
 Linear Scattering: Rayleigh and Mie
 Nonlinear Scattering: Stimulated Brillouin and Stimulated
Raman
 Radiation/ Bend loss

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 Absorption
 Material absorption is a loss mechanism related to the
material composition and the fabrication Process
 Dissipation of some of the transmitted optical power as heat
in the waveguide
 Intrinsic absorption:
 Absorption in the material of the fiber
 Pure silicate glass has little intrinsic loss in infrared region
 Not significant
 Extrinsic loss
 Absorption due to impurities (metal elements)
 Significant

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 Linear Scattering
 Linear scattering mechanisms cause the transfer of some or all of
the optical power contained within one propagating mode to be
transferred linearly into a different modes
 Transmitted light as the transfer may be to a leaky or radiation
mode which does not continue to propagate within the fiber core,
but is radiated from the fiber
 Rayleigh Scattering
 Due to fluctuations of refractive index
 The inhomogenties are random and follows Rayleigh distribution
 Mie Scattering
 Due to nonperfect cylindrical structure of waveguide
 Irregularities in the core-cladding interface
 Diameter fluctuations
 Strains and bubbles
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 Nonlinear scattering
 Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS)
 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
 The incident photon in this scattering process produces a
phonon of acoustic frequency as well as a scattered photon
 Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS)
 Similar to SBS except that a high-frequency optical phonon
rather than an acoustic phonon is generated in the scattering
process
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 Radiation/ Bend Loss
 Optical fibers suffer radiation losses at bends or curves on
their paths
 Why?
 Energy at the bend exceeding the velocity of light in the
cladding
 The guidance mechanism is inhibited
 Light energy to be radiated from the fiber

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 Overall Attenuation

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 Dispersion
 Dispersion of the transmitted optical signal causes distortion
for both digital and analog transmission
 Each transmitted light pulse broadens and overlaps with its
neighbors. The effect is known as inter symbol interference
(ISI)

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 Dispersion
 Bit error rate (BER) increases due to ISI
 If pulse duration after dispersion is 2τ, then bite rate
 Usually pulse shape is like Gaussian and hence the maximum
bit rate
where σ is the rms width of light pulse.

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 Dispersion in Different Types of Fiber

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 Problem

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 Dispersion in Fiber
 Intramodal/chromatic dispersion
 Occurs in all types of optical fiber
 Optical sources emit a band of frequencies
 Propagation delay differences between the different spectral
components of the transmitted signal
 Broadening of each transmitted mode and hence intramodal
dispersion
 The delay differences may be caused by the dispersive properties
of the waveguide material (material dispersion) and also
guidance effects within the fiber structure (waveguide
dispersion)
 Intermodal dispersion
 Propagation delay differences between modes within a multimode
fiber
17  Under single-mode operation there is no intermodal dispersion
 Material Dispersion
 Pulse broadening due to material dispersion results from the
different group velocities of the various spectral components
 Occurs when the phase velocity of a plane wave propagating
in the dielectric medium varies nonlinearly with wavelength
 The pulse spread due to material dispersion may be obtained
by considering the group delay τg

 The pulse delay τm due to material dispersion in a fiber of

length L

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 Material Dispersion
 For a source with rms spectral width σλ and a mean wavelength λ,
the rms pulse broadening due to material dispersion σm can be
obtained as

 Material dispersion parameter M/ DM ( )

 Thus, σm=ML σλ

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 Material Dispersion of silica

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 Problem 1

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 Problem 2

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 Waveguide Dispersion
 Results from the variation in group velocity with wavelength for
a particular mode
 Considering the ray theory approach, it is equivalent to the
angle between the ray and the fiber axis varying with
wavelength which subsequently leads to a variation in the
transmission times for the rays, and hence dispersion
 Negligible compared with material dispersion (≈0.1 to 0.2 ns
km−1)
 For single-mode fibers waveguide dispersion may be significant
 The waveguide dispersion parameter DW

V =is the normalized frequency for the fiber=

23 b= the normalized propagation constant=
 Waveguide Dispersion

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 Total Dispersion Parameter (SMF)
Total Dispersion Parameter, DT

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 Intermodal Dispersion
 Propagation delay differences between modes within a
multimode fiber
 Intermodal dispersion occurs in multimode step index fiber and
multimode graded index fiber but not in a single mode fiber

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 Intermodal dispersion in multimode
step index fiber

 The fastest and slowest modes propagating in the step index

fiber may be represented by the axial ray and the extreme
meridional ray
 Both rays are traveling at the same velocity within the
constant refractive index fiber core, the delay difference is
directly related to their respective path lengths within the
fiber
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 Intermodal dispersion in multimode
step index fiber
 Minimum delay time in a fiber of length L,
 Maximum delay time,
 Further,
 Thus,
 The delay difference δTs between the extreme meridional ray and
the axial ray

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 Intermodal dispersion in multimode
step index fiber

 Consider optical pulse of unit area such

that

 The rms pulse broadening is the

variance of pulse,i.e.,

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 Intermodal dispersion in multimode
step index fiber

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 Problem

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 Intermodal Dispersion Graded Index
Fiber

 Under parabolic assumption of delay distribution, it can be

shown that

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  Hence, the improvement in graded index fiber is 1000 times

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 Overall Fiber Dispersion
 The overall dispersion in multimode fibers comprises both
chromatic and intermodal terms

where σc is the intramodal or chromatic broadening and σn is

the intermodal broadening caused by delay differences
between the modes

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 Dispersion Modified Fiber

 Attenuation is high at zero dispersion wavelength

 Dispersion is not zero at the operating point 1.33 um
 Waveguide dispersion is negative at the operating point which
reduces dispersion
 The minimum attenuation is at 1.55 um, thus dispersion modified
fiber is required to obtain zero dispersion at 1.55 um.
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 Dispersion Modified Fiber
 Total dispersion

 Dispersion Modification Process:

 Dispersion shifted fiber (DSF)
 Dispersion Flattened fiber (DFF)

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 Dispersion Shifted Fiber
 Can be done by reduction in the fiber
core diameter with an accompanying
increase in the relative or fractional
index difference
 Different refractive index profiles are
used for DSF

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 DSF

Advanced refractive index profiles for dispersion-shifted fibers: (a) triangular profile multiple
index design; (b) segmented-core triangular profile design; (c) dual-shaped core design
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 Dispersion Flattened Fiber
 To obtain DFFs multilayer index profiles are fabricated with
increased waveguide dispersion
 In effect these fibers exhibit two wavelengths of zero total
chromatic dispersion

Dispersion-flattened fiber refractive index profiles: (a) double

clad fiber (W fiber); (b) triple clad fiber; (c) quadruple clad
fiber
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 Nonzero-dispersion-shifted fibers
 Nonzero-dispersion-shifted fiber (NZ-DSF) is sometimes
simply called nonzero dispersion fiber (NZDF) and a variant
of this fiber type is negative-dispersion fiber (NDF)
 Also be referred to as dispersion compensating fiber (DCF)
 NZ-DSF was introduced in the mid-1990s to better provide
for wavelength division multiplexing

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 NZ-DSF

Typical refractive index profiles: (a) nonzero-dispersion-shifted fiber (NZDSF);

(b) negative-dispersion fiber (NDF)

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 Optical Fiber Connection/ Joint
 Two major categories of fiber connection
1. Fiber splices:
These are semipermanent or permanent joints which find
major use in most optical fiber telecommunication systems
(analogous to electrical soldered joints).
2. Demountable fiber connectors / connectors:
These are removable joints which allow easy, fast, manual
coupling and uncoupling of fibers (analogous to electrical
plugs and sockets).

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 Fiber Splices
 Fusion Splices
Heating of the two prepared fiber ends to their fusing point with
the application of sufficient axial pressure between the two optical
fibers

 Mechanical Splices
- Many mechanical techniques are used to connect to fiber
permanently
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 Fiber Connectors
 So many types

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 Fiber Connectors

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 Fiber Coupler
 An optical fiber coupler is a device that distribute light from
a main fiber into one or more branches of fibers
 Power transfer takes place in two ways
(a) Core interaction type: through the fiber core cross-section
by butt jointing
(b) Surface interaction type: through the fiber surface

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 Fiber Coupler
 Couplers can be divided into three groups
1. Three- and four-port couplers
 Used for signal splitting, distribution and combining
2. Star couplers
 Used for distributing a single input signal to multiple outputs
3. MUX/DEMUX
 Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) devices for
multiplexing and de multiplexing of lights of different
wavelengths

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 Three and four port coupler

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 Star coupler and MUX/DEMUX

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