UNIT-I OPTICAL COMMUNICATION

R.RADHA KRISHNA
B.E,M.Tech,AMIETE

Optical vs. Electronic Circuits

Optical Photons Photonic crystals
Electronic Electrons Semiconductors

Photons can travel much faster than electrons! c = 3.0 108 m/s (vacuum) vs nf (Fermi Speed) = 1.57 106 m/s (copper wire)

Elements of a Fiber Data Link

Transmitter emits light pulses (LED or Laser) Connectors and Cables passively carry the pulses Receiver detects the light pulses
Cable

Transmitter

Receiver

Basic Fiber Optic Transmission System

OPTICAL TRANSMITTER

SIGNAL INPUT
OPTICAL RECEIVER

FIBER OPTIC CABLE

SIGNAL OUTPUT

Repeaters
For long links, repeaters are needed to compensate for signal loss

Fiber

Repeater

Fiber

Fiber Repeater Repeater

Fiber

Optical Fiber
Core
Glass or plastic with a higher index of refraction than the cladding Carries the signal

Cladding
Glass or plastic with a lower index of refraction than the core

Buffer
Protects the fiber from damage and moisture

Jacket
Holds one or more fibers in a cable

Fiber Optic Specifications

Attenuation
Loss of signal, measured in dB

Dispersion
Blurring of a signal, affects bandwidth

Bandwidth
The number of bits per second that can be sent through a data link

Numerical Aperture
Measures the largest angle of light that can be accepted into the core

Attenuation and Dispersion

See animation at link Ch 2e

Some properties of light

Light is a transverse wave Several wavelengths to make up electromagnetic spectrum Different wavelengths of light contain different amounts of energy Light can produce a photoelectric effect Light will travel different speeds in different mediums (space, air, water, etc.).

The Nature of Light

Fig: Representations of spherical and plane wave fronts

and their associated rays

Optical fiber as waveguide

An optical fiber is a cylindrical dielectric waveguide capable of conveying electromagnetic waves at optical frequencies.  The electromagnetic energy is in the form of the light and propagates along the axis of the fiber. The structural of the fiber determines the transmission characteristics The wave propagation of light along the waveguide is decided by the modes of the waveguides, here mode means path. Each mode has distinct pattern of electric and magnetic field distributions along the fiber length.

Only few mode. can satisfy the homogeneous wave equation in the fiber also the boundary condition at waveguide surfaces.  When there is only one path for light to follow then it is called as single mode propagation. When there is more than one path then it is called as multimode propagation.

Refraction
When light is travelling through different mediums, it travels at different speeds. When light slows down it appears bent
angle of incedence Speed of light in vacuum(C) Refractive index (n) = Speed of light in medium (V)

Law of Snell:
angle of refraction

n1 sin U 1

! n2 sin U 2

Snells Law
The bending or refraction of the light ray at the interface is a result of the difference in the speed of light in two materials that have different refractive indices. The relationship at the interface is known as Snell s law.

n1 sin 1=n2 sin n1 cos 1=n2 cos

2 2

 The angle 1between the incident ray and the normal to the surface is known as the angle of incidence.

Critical angle
If the angle of incidence 1 is increased, a point will eventually be reached where the light ray in air is parallel to the glass surface. This point is known as the critical angle of incidence c.

When the angle of incidence ( 1) is progressively increased, there will be progressive increase of refractive angle ( 2). At some condition ( 1) the refractive angle ( 2) becomes 900 to the normal. When this happen the refracted light ray travels along the Interface.  The angle of incidence ( 1) at the point at which the refractive angle ( 2) becomes 900is called the critical angle. It is denoted by c.
The critical angle is defined as the minimum angle of incidence ( 1) at which the ray strikes the interface of two media and causes an ang1e of refraction ( 2) equal to 900.

Totally internally reflection

As the angle of incidence 1 in an optically denser material becomes larger, the refracted angle 2 approaches /2. Beyond this point no refraction is possible and the light rays become totally internally reflected.

When the incident angle is increased beyond the critical angle, the Light ray does not pass through the interface into the other medium. This gives the effect of mirror exist at the interface with no possibility of light escaping outside the medium. In this condition angle of reflection ( 2) is equal to angle of Incidence ( 1).This action is ca1led as Total Internal Reflection (TlR) of the beam.

Types of Rays

Different ray propagation

V number

Reflection
Law of Reflection: When waves are bounced
off a smooth surface, the angle of incidence and angle of reflection are the same.
angle of incidence = angle of reflection

Mirror

object distance = image distance

Diffuse reflection

Refraction

Critical angle
If the angle of incidence increases, so does the angle of refraction. The critical angle is defined to be an angle of incidence for which the angle of refraction is 90 degrees.

Reflection When the angle of incidence

becomes greater than the critical angle, a new phenomenon occurs called reflection.

Light no longer passes into the less dense medium at all.

Negative Refraction

Nature 2003, 423,22 Science 2004, 305,788

Numerical Aperture
All fibers have a defined acceptance angle. The sine of the acceptance angle in air is known as the Numerical Aperture (NA)

NA

sin 5

2 1

2 0

Numerical Aperture
If the core and cladding have almost the same index of refraction, the numerical aperture will be small This means that light must be shooting right down the center of the fiber to stay in the core

Step-index fiber :-The refractive index of the core is uniform throughout and undergoes an abrupt change (or step) at the cladding boundary. This is called a step-index fiber. Graded-index fiber :-The core refractive index is made to vary as a function of the radial distance from the center of the fiber. This type is a graded-index fiber.

In practical step-index fibers the core of radius a has a refractive index n1 which is typically equal to 1.48. This is surrounded by a cladding of lightly lower index n2, where

n2 = n1 (1- )
The parameter is called the core cladding index difference or simply the index difference. Values of n2 are chosen such that is nominally 0.01.

Modes in Step-Index Fibers

UNIT-II

SINGLE-MODE Fibers Single-mode fibers are constructed by letting the dimensions of the core diameter be a few wavelengths (usually 8-12) and by having small index differences between the core and the cladding. From Eq. with V = 2.4, it can be seen that single-mode propagation is possible for fairly large variations in values of the physical core size a and the core-cladding index differences .

However, in practical designs of single-mode fibers, the core-cladding index difference varies between 0.2 and 1.0 percent, and the core diameter should be chosen to be just below the cut off of the first higher-order mode; that is, for V slightly less thin 2.4. For example, a typical single-mode fiber may have a core radius of 3 m and a numerical aperture of 0.1 at a wavelength of 0.8 m. From Eqs., this yields V = 2.356

Mode-Field Diameter
A fundamental parameter of a single-mode fiber is the mode-field diameter (MFD).This parameter can be determined from the mode-field distribution of the fundamental LP01 mode. The mode-field diameter is analogous to the core diameter in multimode fibers, except that in singlemode fibers not all the light that propagates through the fiber is carried in the core.

Let us assume the distribution to be gaussian

FIBER MATERIALS In selecting materials for optical fibers, a number of requirements must be satisfied. For example: 1. It must be possible to make long, thin, flexible fibers from the material. 2. The material must be transparent at a particular optical wavelength in order for the fiber to guide light efficiently. 3. Physically compatible materials that have slightly different refractive indices for the core and cladding must be available.

Glass Fibers

The principal raw material for silica is sand. Glass composed of pure silica is referred to as either silica glass, fused silica, or vitreous silica.

Halide Glass Fibers(heavy metal fluoride glass)

Active Glass Fibers(rare earth elements(57-71)) Chalgenide Glass Fibers Plastic Optical Fibers

ATTENUATION
Attenuation of a light signal as it propagates along a fiber is an important consideration in the design of an optical communication system. The basic attenuation mechanisms in a fiber are absorption, scattering, and radiative losses of the optical-energy.
Absorption is related to the fiber material, whereas scattering is associated both with the fiber material and with structural imperfections in the optical waveguide. .

Attenuation owing to radiative effects originates from perturbations (both microscopic and macroscopic) of the fiber geometry. Attenuation Units

Singlemode Fiber
Singlemode fiber has a core diameter of 8 to 9 microns, which only allows one light path or mode
Images from arcelect.com (Link Ch 2a)

Index of refraction

Multimode Step-Index Fiber

Multimode fiber has a core diameter of 50 or 62.5 microns (sometimes even larger)
Allows several light paths or modes
This causes modal dispersion some modes take longer to pass through the fiber than others because they travel a longer distance

See animation at link Ch 2f

Index of refraction

Multimode Graded-Index Fiber

The index of refraction gradually changes across the core
Modes that travel further also move faster This reduces modal dispersion so the bandwidth is greatly increased

Index of refraction

Halide Glass Fibers: Halide glasses in which the anions are from elements in group VII of the periodic table, namely fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine. The material that researchers have concentrated on is a heavy metal fluoride glass, which uses ZrF4 as the major component and glass network former. ZBLAN fluoride glass. This material forms the core of a glass fiber. To make a lower-refractive-index glass, one partially replaces ZrF4 by HaF4 to get a ZHBLAN cladding.

Active Glass Fibers: Incorporating rare-earth elements

(atomic numbers 57-71) into a normally passive glass gives the resulting- material new optical and magnetic properties. Two commonly used materials for fiber lasers are erbium and neodymium. The ionic concentrations of the rare-earth elements are low (on the order of 0.005-0.05 mole percent) to avoid clustering effects.

Chalgeoide Glass Fibers: In addition to allowing the

creation of optical amplifiers, the nonlinear properties of glass fibers can be exploited for other applications, such as all-optical switches and fiber lasers.  Chalgenide glass is one candidate for these uses because of its high optical nonlinearity and its long interaction length.

Plastic Optical Fibers

The growing demand for delivering high-speed services directly to the workstation has led fiber developers to create high-bandwidth graded-index polymer (plastic) optical fibers (POF) for use in a customer premises. The core of these fibers is either polymethylmethacrylate or a perfluorinated polymer. These fibers are hence referred to as PMMA POF and PFP POF, respectively.

ATTENUATION Attenuation of a light signal as it propagates along a fiber is an important consideration in the design of an optical communication system, since it plays a major role in determining the maximum transmission distance between a transmitter and a receiver or an in-line amplifier. The basic mechanisms in a fiber are absorption, scattering, and radiative losses of the optical-energy. As light travels along a fiber, its power decreases exponentially with distance. If P(O) is the optical power in a fiber at the origin (at z = 0), then the power P(z) at a distance z further down the fiber is

is the fiber attenuation coefficient given in units of, for example, km-1. Note that the units for can also be designated by nepers the common procedure is to express the attenuation coefficient in units of decibels per kilometer, denoted by dB/km. Designating this parameter by , we have

This parameter is generally referred to as the fiber loss or the fiber attenuation

Absorption Absorption is caused by three different mechanisms: 1. Absorption by atomic defects in the glass composition. 2. Extrinsic absorption by impurity atoms in the glass material. 3. Intrinsic absorption by the basic constituent atoms of the fiber material.
Radiation damages a material by changing its internal structure. The damage effects depend on the energy of the ionizing particles or rays (e.g., electrons, neutrons, or gamma rays), the radiation flux (dose rate), and the fluence (particles per square centimeter).

1 rad(Si) = 100erg/g = 0.01 J/kg

In particular, the ultraviolet loss contribution in dB/km at any wavelength can be expressed empirically as a function of the mole fraction x of Ge02as

Scattering Losses Scattering losses in glass arise from microscopic variations in the material density, from compositional fluctuations, and from structural inhomogeneities or defects occurring during fiber manufacture. In addition, since glass is made up of several oxides, such as SiO2, Ge02, and P205 compositional fluctuations can occur.

 single-component glass the scattering loss at a wavelength . Resulting from density fluctuations can be approximated by(in base e units)

Bending Losses Radiative losses occur whenever an optical fiber undergoes a bend of finite radius of curvature. Large-curvature radiation losses, which are known as macro bending losses or simply bending Losses. Fibers can be subject to 2- types of bends, 1.Macroscopic bends having radii that are large compared with the fiber diameter. 2. Random microscopic bends of the fiber axis that can arise when the fibers are incorporated into cables.

Sketch of the fundamental mode field in a curved optical waveguide

Core and Cladding Losses

Since the core and cladding have different indices of refraction and therefore differ in composition the core and cladding generally have different attenuation coefficients, denoted 1 and 2 , If the influence of modal coupling is ignored, the loss for a mode of order (v, m) for a step-index waveguide is

The loss encountered by a given mode is then

Unit-III

SIGNAL DISTORTION IN OPTICAL WAVEGUIDES

An optical signal becomes increasingly distorted as it travels along a fiber