(IJECET)
Volume 7, Issue 3, MayJune 2016, pp. 87102, Article ID: IJECET_07_03_011
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ISSN Print: 0976-6464 and ISSN Online: 0976-6472
IAEME Publication
CHARACTERIZATION OF PHYSICAL
LAYER IMPAIRMENTS IMPACT ON
OPTICAL FIBER TRANSMISSION SYSTEMS
Suhail Al-Awis and Ali Y. Fattah
Department of Communications Engineering,
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq
ABSTRACT
In this paper the characterization of the impact of physical layer
impairments on quality of transmission of optical fiber transmission systems
had been demonstrated analytically and verified numerically with simulation
results. Linear and nonlinear impairments in optical links accurately
characterized with analytical modeling techniques but on the counterpart it is
cost efficient to characterize the impact of these impairments using empirical
techniques which provides real time information of these impairments to
digital signal processing algorithms used in their compensation to ensure high
throughput of the optical transmission systems.
Keyword: Optical Fiber, Characterization, Physical Layer Impairments and
Quality of Transmission.
Cite this Article: Suhail Al-Awis and Ali Y. Fattah, Characterization of
Physical Layer Impairments Impact on Optical Fiber Transmission Systems,
International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering &
Technology, 7(3), 2016, pp. 87102.
http://www.iaeme.com/IJECET/issues.asp?JType=IJECET&VType=7&IType=3
1. INTRODUCTION
The quality of transmission of high speed optical fiber transmission systems is highly
affected by chromatic dispersion (CD), phase noise (PN), polarization mode
dispersion (PMD) and nonlinear effects. Coherent optical detection allows the
significant equalization of transmission system impairments in the electrical domain,
and has become one of the most promising techniques for the next generation
communication networks. With the full optical wave information, the fiber dispersion,
carrier phase noise and the nonlinear effects can be well compensated by the powerful
digital signal processing (DSP) [1].
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Figure 1 (a) Canonical model of a multi-span long-haul fiber channel, (b) Multispan longhaul fiber channel with inline amplification and dispersion compensation
Invention of the erbium doped ber amplier (EDFA) in the 1990s stalled the
development in coherent optical systems, which enabled repeaterless transmission
over long-haul distances. The combination of the C-band (15301570 nm) and L-band
(15701610 nm) spectrums resulted in 10 THz of bandwidth. Rapid growth of
internet applications trafc, such as multimedia sharing, made this bandwidth
becoming rapidly fully utilized. Thus, there is renewed interest in high-spectralefciency transmission over long distances [16].
New challenges ahead the new channel configuration, in which optical signals are
propagated over thousands of kilometers of fiber, such as the need to compensate
chromatic dispersion (CD). A typical long-haul system model is shown in Figure 1
(b), with inline amplification and dispersion compensation fiber (DCF) after every
span. Furthermore, as the number of wavelength division multiplexed (WDM)
channels per fiber increase, and as the data rate per channel increase, fiber
nonlinearity, (PMD) and other impairments which were previously not important
became limiting factors [15]. Transmission impairments in optical fiber
communication can be categorized into linear and nonlinear impairments. Linear
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(1)
Where is the signal amplitude, is the distance of the fiber, is the attenuation
coefficient, is group velocity dispersion parameter and is the Kerr nonlinear
coefficient.
2. THEORITECAL BACKGROUND
2.1 Linear Impairments
Modelling of single mode fiber in the absence of the nonlinearity can be
considered as linear time invariant (LTI) channel with dually polarized inputs and
output as shown in Figure 2 [15].
Linear Channel
Etx,1(t)
Etx,2(t)
h11
h21
H=
Erx,1(t)
Erx,2(t)
h12
h22
=Erx(t)
11 () 12 ()
)
21 () 22 ()
() = (
11 () 12 ()
)
21 () 22 ()
(2)
where hij(t) is the response of the i-th output polarization due to applied impulse at
the j-th input polarization of the fiber. H() and h(t) are Jones matrices with
frequency-dependent and time-dependent elements, respectively. The matrix
description of the channel is sufficient for describing CD, polarization-dependent loss
(PDL), all PMD orders, optical filtering effects, sampling time error, and any other
linear impairment [18].
2.1.1 Fiber attenuation
Fiber loss parameter (z), which describes the attenuation of the optical signal
power while propagating through the fiber channel as shown in equation (3).
() =
10
10 ( )
(3)
Where z is the length of the fiber channel, Pout and Pin are the output and input
optical powers of transmission fiber span respectively. It is mainly caused by material
absorption and Rayleigh scattering effects, but it is also a function of carrier signal
wavelength [19].
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2 A
+ 2 + 1 + 2 2 2 6 3 3 = 0
(4)
Here the group velocity G is related to 1 and therefore calculate the speed the
envelope of an optical signal propagates along the fiber:
1
1 = = ( + )
(5)
With c is the light speed in vacuum, n is the linear refractive index and is the
optical frequency. 2 is the group-velocity dispersion (GVD) parameter, which
broadens the travelling pulse:
1
2 (2
2
)
2
(6)
2 2
2
2
(7)
3=d2/d is the GVD slope parameter, which relates to the dispersion slope
parameter S by:
=
4 2
2
3
2 2
+ ( 2 ) 3
(8)
+ 2 + 2 2 2 = 0
(9)
The total dispersion profile of an optical fiber can be evaluated by material and
waveguide dispersion respectively (DM) and (DW). For the SSMF the summation of
these parameters resulted in a dispersion profile shown in Figure 3, with the zero
dispersion wavelength at 1324 nm and D=16ps/km/nm at 1550 nm [20].
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|x y |
2
= | |
(10)
Where nx and ny as the effective refractive index of both modes. x and y are the
modes propagation constants. The axis with larger group velocity described as the fast
axis while the other with smaller group velocity denoted as the slow axis, referring to
Figure 5 for a linearly polarized optical pulse launched at 45o into a fiber. The
difference between arrival times of the two pulses is referred to as differential group
delay J (DGD) which have Maxwellian distribution around mean DGD-value J.
[20].
Figure 5 Random birefringence and resulting DGD for optical pulse launched into a fiber
at 45o with respect to slow axis.
The PMD-induced pulse broadening can be evaluated from the DGD between the
two polarization components after averaging over random birefringence [23] as
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(11)
Where DP is the fiber PMD parameter measured in ps/km. While in [24] PMD
power penalty can be estimated as,
= 10.22 2
(12)
(13)
th
where Pm is the power of the m channel or the filtered channel, Pn is the power of
the nth neighboring channel, and R are the receiver photo responsitivities and T is the
receiver transmissivity of the nth channel when the mth channel is filtered. The
current due to the filtered channel power (Ich) and the current due to power of the
crosstalk from the neighboring channels is (IX). The current must be increases by to
keep the performance of the system in terms of eye opening.
Ich +IX
IX
=1+
Ich
IX
(14)
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Where letters a,b,c and d refer to the port and the subscripts 1,2,3 and 4 refer to
the wavelength number. For ideal conditions the wavelengths at the input ports are
routed to the output ports according to the scheme shown in Figure 7. However due to
imperfections in the AWG structure each wavelength in the output port suffers from
in band crosstalk which appears due to power leaking from other ports at the same
wavelength and the out of band crosstalk which appears from the wavelength
channels in the same port [25]. The in-band crosstalk penalty for a WDM system with
N channels is given by [26] as shown in equation (15).
= 10 log10(1 2 2 )
(15)
Where
2 = ( 1)
N is the number of channels and -value is the measure of eye opening of the
receiver.
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()
93
(16)
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Where as the ber core diameter and as the operating wavelength, both are
measured in m, is the ber attenuation in dB per kilometer and is the source
bandwidth in GHz.
= 5.9 102 2
()
(17)
2
2
2
,0
XPM
SPM
FWM
OOK
Rx
Only Disp.
accounted
Opt. Amp
BER vs OSNR
GW Opt.
Noise
OSNR
OSNR
Att.
Mux
Without Disp.
effect
Figure 8 System model for OSNR penalty measurements due to fiber dispersion
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(a)
(b)
Figure 9 Simulation results for OSNR penalty measurements (a) BER vs OSNR for different
values of MZMs alfa factor (b) OSNR penalty due to fiber dispersion
CW
CW
Pump
Mux
NRZ
Att. = 0
Disp. = 0
SPM = No
XPM = Yes
Birefringence = Constant
SOP
Monitoring
Poincare
The Poincare SOP graph is shown in Figure 11 (a) for azimuth 15o and ellipticity
of 10o of the CW pump signal. A modification to the SOP of the CW pump signal was
made to observe the impact on the probe. Pump SOP changed to azimuth 25o,
ellipticity 15o as shown in Figure 11 (b). While in Figure 11 (c) the probe and CW
pump have same SOP at azimuth 25o, Ellipticity 15o.
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(a)
(b)
(c)
Figure 11 SOP of the probe and the pump signals (a) SOP at pump polarization az =15o, Elp
= 10o (b) SOP at pump polarization az = 25o, Elp = 15o (c) SOP at probe and pump
polarizations az = 25o, Elp = 15o
If the CW pump is deactivated and the modulated (10G NRZ) pump is activated,
the depolarization of the probe is clearly observed as shown in Figure 12.
Figure 12 SOP of the Received Signals impacted by SOP of the NRZ-OOK Pump Signal.
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(a)
(b)
(C)
(D)
(E)
Figure 13 Impact of Crosstalk in an Arrayed-Waveguide Grating Router (AWGR) on NxN
Optical Interconnection (a) System Model (b) Eye diag. at 25 dB XT att. (c) Eye diag. at 30
dB XT att. (e) Eye diag. at 35 dB XT att. (d) BER vs ROP for different values of XT att.
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Intraband
Crosstalk Signal
(2 = 1)
NRZ
Desired Signal
1
OOK
Rx
Mux
Opt. Att. to
Control XT
NRZ
No Crosstalk
B-B
OOK
Rx
BER vs XT Att.
NRZ
OOK
Rx
Opt. Att. to
Control XT
Mux
Opt. Att.
(A)
(B)
Figure 15 Comparison of BER degradation due to intraband and interband crosstalk of the
same level (a) System model (b) BER vs XT attenuation for different cases
Opt. Filter
NRZ
In_Fw
OOK
Rx
Out_Fw
110 km Fiber
BER vs Ch.
Separation
Opt. Mux
Universal
Fiber
Bus
In_Bw
NRZ
Out_Bw
Tx 2
8x10 Gbps
(a)
(b)
Figure 16 Performance degradation due to Rayleigh and Brillouin scattering (a) Simulation
Setup (b) BER vs Channel Spacing for Different Channel Power Levels
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When pulse collision take place as shown in Figure 17 (b), one pulse walking
through a pulse on a different WDM channels the pulses will interact because they
both affect the index of the fiber along which they propagated causing XPM
impairment as shown in Figure 17 (c). The effect of the fiber's nonlinearity combined
with the dispersion of the fiber also causes shaping of a pulse, by its own effect on the
fiber's index. This is SPM which will compress a strong pulse, increasing its peak
amplitude refer to Figure 17 (d).
Finally the FWM impairment penalty characterization can be clearly observed
using VPITransmission maker simulation setup in Figure 18, which consist of 4 x 10
Gbit/s WDM transmission system over Dispersion Shifted Fiber (DSF). The
emergence of the FWM products outside the WDM signal bandwidths can be clearly
observed in terms of eye penalty and optical spectrum as shown in Figure 19 (a-b).
The WDM signal attenuation due to FWM penalty is shown in Figure 19 (c).
(b)
(a)
(c)
(d)
Figure 17 SPM and XPM Measurement (a) Simulation setup (b) Pulse collision of strong and
weak pulse (c) Strong pulse impact on weak pulse XPM (d) Weak pulse impact on strong
pulse SPM
NRZ
Power
Meter
NRZ
Power
Meter
NRZ
1 km of DSF
Opt. MUX Attenuation=0.2 dB/km
ROP (dBm)
Vs
L (km)
Opt. MUX
Power
Meter
NRZ
Power
Meter
Figure 18 Simulation Setup of a 4 x 10 Gbit/s WDM transmission system over DSF fiber to
characterize the FWM effect
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(b)
(c)
(a)
Figure 19 Emergence of FWM products (a) Eye penalty of the multiplexed signals (b)
Optical spectrums of the multiplexed signals (c) Power level of the received signals.
4. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper the physical layer impairments of the optical fiber transmission link
had been characterized using analytical modelling and verified using numerical
simulations. It is shown that linear impairments are deterministic and have
controllable impact on the performance of the transmission links in terms of BER,
OSNR and Eye penalty. But nonlinear impairments have nondeterministic and
partially controllable impact of the quality of transmission QoT of optical fiber
transmission links. Besides the analytical modeling techniques an empirical modelling
one which are based on numerical simulations or experimental results seems more
promising especially for online impairment measurement and impairment
compensation algorithms since empirical techniques will save more computational
cost.
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