IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 12, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 2000 1489

Investigation of Mode Coupling in Step Index Plastic

Optical Fibers Using the Power Flow Equation
Alexander Djordjevich and Svetislav Savović

Abstract—Using the power flow equation, we have examined the where

mode coupling caused by intrinsic perturbation effects of the step angular power distribution;
index plastic optical fiber. A numerical solution has been obtained distance from the input end of the fiber;
by the explicit finite difference method. Results show the state of
mode coupling along the fiber. They indicate that the equilibrium propagation angle with respect to the core axis;
mode distribution is achieved at much shorter lengths compared coupling coefficient assumed constant [5], [6];
to the case with glass fibers. modal attenuation.
Index Terms—Coupled mode analysis, detectors, diffusion equa- Because is negligible [8] except for ( is angle of
tions, finite difference methods, local area networks, optical fibers. total internal reflection), equation (1) reduces to the following
form of the diffusion equation:
I. INTRODUCTION
(2)

T RANSMISSION characteristics of step index (SI) plastic

optical fibers (POFs) depend strongly upon the rate of
mode coupling (power transfer from one mode to another)
caused by intrinsic perturbation effects within some coupling
length from the input fiber end. These effects reduce modal
dispersion, allowing for increased bandwidth when used in
local area networks (LANs) [1]. However, they significantly
change output-field properties and degrade the beam quality,
with particularly unpredictable consequences for the power de-
livery and sensory systems. The case is perhaps most dramatic
when measuring the deformation curvature of structures under
mechanical loading [2], because the said mechanism of mode
coupling interferes with the signal modulation. This is but one
example requiring an effective means of calculating the rate of
mode coupling that is due to intrinsic perturbation effects of
the fiber—which is presented in this paper.
Work has been reported using geometric optics (ray ap-
proximation) to investigate the mode coupling and predict
output-field patterns [3]. By employing the power flow equa-
tion, these patterns have been predicted [4]–[6] as a function of
the launching conditions and fiber length.
The magnitude of the coupling length for achieving the
equilibrium mode distribution (EMD) as well as all transition
states along are determined in this letter by an explicit finite
difference method (EFDM) applied to the power flow equation
for a SI POF. We tested our results against experimental findings
by Jiang et al. [7].
II. POWER FLOW EQUATION
Gloge’s power flow equation is [4]:
(1)
Manuscript received April 12, 2000; revised June 28, 2000. This work was
supported by the University Grants Council and City University of Hong Kong.
The authors are with the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Publisher Item Identifier S 1041-1135(00)09568-9.
Its boundary conditions are:
(3)
The first condition means that the mode with infinitely high loss
cannot carry power. The second one indicates that the coupling
is limited to the modes propagating with .
The solution of equation (2) for the steady state power distri-
bution is given by [6]:
(4)
where is the Bessel function of the first kind and zero order
and (m ) is the attenuation coefficient. We
used this solution to test our numerical results for the case of the
fiber length at which the power distribution becomes indepen-
dent of the launching conditions.
III. NUMERICAL METHOD
In the 1970s and 1980s, implicit finite difference methods
(IFDMs) were generally preferred over explicit ones (EFDMs).
This trend has been changing with the advancement of com-
puters, shifting the emphasis to EFDM [9]. We now report, to
our knowledge for the first time, the solution of the power flow
equation using EFDM.
Being often unconditionally stable, IFDM allows larger step
lengths than EFDM. Nevertheless, this does not translate into
IFDMs higher computational efficiency because extremely
large matrices must be manipulated at each calculation step.
We find that the EFDM algorithm is also simpler in addition to
being more efficient computationally.
Equation (2) can be expressed as
(5)

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 1490 IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 12, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2000

(a) (b)

(c) (d)
Fig. 1. Normalized output angular power distribution at different fiber lengths calculated for four Gaussian input angles  =
0 (solid line), 5 (dashed line),
10 (dotted line) and 15 (dashed–dotted line) with FWHM = 2 for: (a) z = 1 m; (b) z = 15 m; (c) z = 20 m and (d) z = 50 m (open circles represent
analytical steady state solution).

In order to apply EFDM, we have discretized the solution space where is a grid dimension in the direction. In
using the central difference scheme for both order to prevent the problem of singularity at grid points ,
and , and a forward difference scheme for the we have used the following relation:
derivative [9]. Equation (5) now reads

(8)

The most sensitive point in achieving stability of a difference

(6) scheme is the choice of step lengths and . We obtained
that, for and m, the Von Neu-
where indexes and refer to the discretization step lengths mann stability condition [9] ( is amplification factor)
and for angle and length , respectively. This is a simple is satisfied. With the coupling coefficient in (6) in the range
formula for at the ( )th mesh point in terms of the 10 –3.1 10 rad /m (this range being broader than that de-
known values along the th distance row. The truncation error rived in [1], [4], [5]), we obtained at every calcula-
for the difference equation (6) is . Using a small tion step. Therefore, we have achieved the stability of our dif-
enough value of , the truncation errors can be reduced until ference scheme for all types of SI fibers. Needless to say, all re-
the accuracy achieved is within the error tolerance. alistic values of the critical angle can also be accommodated.
In the difference form, the boundary conditions (3) become Together, these features make our difference scheme suitable for
treatment of different kinds of optical fibers (e.g., liquid-core,
(7) glass optical fibers and POFs). A typical solution run takes up

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 DJORDJEVICH AND SAVOVIĆ: MODE COUPLING IN STEP INDEX PLASTIC OPTICAL FIBERS
to 11 minutes on a Pentium 300 MHz personal computer for the
longest fiber analyzed (of length m).
While this method can accommodate arbitrary launching con-
ditions, we used Gaussian launching beam distribution of the
form
(9)
with , where is the mean value of the incidence
angle distribution, with the full width at half maximum FWHM
( is standard deviation). This distri-
bution is particularly suitable for collimated beams of light. A
launching angular distribution of a light-emitting diode source
can be accommodated with appropriately large value of .
IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS
To facilitate result comparison, we analyze mode coupling in
the case of an SI POF used in the experiment reported earlier
[7]. The fiber diameter is mm, the refractive indices
of the core and cladding are and ,
respectively, with the theoretical numerical aperture NA
and the critical angle . The number of modes in this
SI multimode optical fiber, for nm, is:
(NA) [10]. This large number of modes may
be represented by a continuum as required for application of
equation (2). Coupling coefficient is required in that equation.
It was found that rad /m [1]—which we have
adopted in this work.
Fig. 1 illustrates our solution of the power flow equation by
showing the evolution of the normalized output power distribu-
tion with fiber length. We show results for four different input
angles: , 5, 10 and 15 (measured inside the fiber). Input
angles over 15 have not been considered because near the crit-
ical angle the attenuation constant cannot be
neglected [8] and the original power flow equation (1) would
have to be solved. The fiber length varied from 1 to 50 m. We
selected Gaussian launch beam with FWHM by setting
in equation (9). It can be observed that for a very
short optical fiber [ m, Fig. 1(a)], the output angular dis-
tribution is of the ring form, with the maximum centered at the
same value as that of the launching angular distribution. This
indicates that almost no mode coupling occurred within such a
short fiber length.
An increase in the fiber length results in a higher coupling of
lower modes and in the shift of their distributions toward . Hill, 1995.
Higher-order modes start to significantly couple only after a
longer fiber length [Fig. 1(b)] and, consequently, no ring pat-
tern is observed for sufficiently large length. EMD is achieved
for a coupling length m [Fig. 1(c)]. This is similarly
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1491
as short a coupling length as that of reference [7]. For the fiber
length of m, Fig. 1(d) shows normalized curves of the
output angular distribution for the four different launch angles
(solid line), as well as the steady state analytical solution of
equation (2) (open circles), where m . Results are
in good agreement, with the relative error below 0.2%. These re-
sults showed a much shorter coupling length than that for glass
optical fibers that is typically in a range of several kilometers
[11], which may be attributed to the stronger intrinsic perturba-
tion effects in POFs.
V. CONCLUSION
We report on the implementation of the explicit finite dif-
ference method for the solution of the time-independent power
flow equation in the case of an SI POF. In order to estimate the
rate of mode coupling, a dependence of the output angular dis-
tribution on the fiber length has been investigated for various
launch angles. Our numerical results agree with the analytical
solution reported earlier for the steady state coupling condition.
The coupling length for the SI POF (NA ) has been found
to be approximately 20 m. This agrees with previously reported
experiments for the same fiber. We also show a negligible mode
coupling in very short SI POFs ( m). This is in contrast to
the graded POFs which have typical coupling lengths of about
2 m [1]. Such information is of interest for application of this
fiber in LANs and in designing fiber optic sensors.
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