MODULE 2: TRANSMISSION CHARACTERISTICS OF OPTICAL FIBERS

1. Introduction
One of the important properties of optical fiber is signal attenuation. It is also known as fiber loss or
signal loss. The signal attenuation of fiber determines the maximum distance between transmitter and
receiver. The attenuation also determines the number of repeaters required, maintaining repeater is
costly. Another important property of optical fiber is distortion mechanism. As the signal pulse travels
along the fiber length it becomes broader. After sufficient length the broad pulses starts overlapping
with adjacent pulses. This creates errors in the receiver. Hence the distortion limits the information
carrying capacity of fiber.

2. Attenuation
1.1
 Attenuation is a measure of decay of signal strength or loss of light power that occurs as light
pulses propagate through the length of the fiber.
 In optical fibers the attenuation is mainly caused by two physical factors absorption and
scattering losses. Absorption is because of fiber material and scattering due to structural
imperfection within the fiber. Nearly 90 % of total attenuation is caused by Rayleigh scattering
only. Microbending of optical fiber also contributes to the attenuation of signal.
 The rate at which light is absorbed is dependent on the wavelength of the light and the
characteristics of particular glass. Glass is a silicon compound, by adding different additional
chemicals to the basic silicon dioxide the optical properties of the glass can be changed.
 The Rayleigh scattering is wavelength dependent and reduces rapidly as the wavelength of
the incident radiation increases.
 The attenuation of fiber is governed by the materials from which it is fabricated, the
manufacturing process and the refractive index profile chosen. Attenuation loss is measured
in dB/km.

2.1 Sources of attenuation

1. Material absorption
2. Scattering losses
3. Bending losses

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 4. Core and cladding losses
5. Dispersion
6. Mode coupling
7. Leaky modes
8. Pulse broadening

As attenuation leads to a loss of power along the fiber, the output power is significantly less than the
coupled power. Let the coupled optical power be P(o) i.e. at origin (z = 0). Then the power at distance
z is given by;

𝑃(𝑧) = 𝑃(0)𝑒 −𝛼𝑝 𝑧

where, 𝛼𝑝 is fiber attenuation constant (per km).
1 𝑃(𝑜)
𝛼𝑝 = 𝑧 𝐼𝑛 [𝑃(𝑧)]

1 𝑃(𝑜)
𝛼𝑑𝐵/𝑘𝑚 = 10. [ ]
𝑧 𝑃(𝑧)

Or 𝛼𝑑𝐵/𝑘𝑚 = 4.343 (𝛼𝑝 /𝑘𝑚)

This parameter is known as fiber loss or fiber attenuation.

P(o) = power launched into the fiber

P(z) power received at a distance z.

 In case of optical transmission the loss is wavelength dependent. So, there is a specific band of
wavelength where the signal attenuation is minimum which is known as optical or operating
window. The wavelength of operation from the optical window is selected as they offer
minimum attenuation.
 Figure below shows three optical windows which offer minimum signal attenuation and also
relationship between attenuation and wavelength.

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  The first optical window is defined from 800-900nm, where the minimum signal loss is 4dB/km.
In early 1970’s this window was used for operation of optical sources and detectors.
 By reducing the concentration of hydroxyl ions and metallic impurities in the fiber material, in
1980’s manufacturers were able to fabricate optical fibers with very low loss in the 1100-1600nm
region. This spectral band is called long wavelength region.
 The second optical window is centered at 1310nm also called O-band, which offers 0.5dB/km.
 The third optical window is centered at 1550nm also called C-band, which gives the loss of
0.2dB/km.
 Hence while designing optical systems for long distance applications the 1550 nm wavelength
is preferred because loss offered at this wavelength is minimum than any other wavelength.

Example

A low loss fiber has average loss of 3 dB/km at 900 nm. Compute the length over which: a) Power
decreases by 50 % b) Power decreases by 75 %.

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 3.1 Absorption
Absorption loss is related to the material composition and fabrication process of fiber. Absorption
loss results in dissipation of some optical power as heat in the fiber cable. Although glass fibers are
extremely pure, some impurities still remain as residue after purification. The amount of absorption
by these impurities depends on their concentration and light wavelength. Absorption is caused by
three different mechanisms.
 Absorption by atomic defects in glass composition.
 Extrinsic absorption by impurity atoms in glass material.
 Intrinsic absorption by basic constituent atom of fiber

4.1 Absorption by atomic defects:

Atomic defects are imperfections in the atomic structure of the fiber materials such as missing
molecules, high density clusters of atom groups. These absorption losses are negligible compared with
intrinsic and extrinsic losses. The absorption effect is most significant when fiber is exposed to ionizing
radiation in nuclear reactor, medical therapies, space missions etc.

5.1 Extrinsic Absorption

Extrinsic absorption occurs due to electronic transitions between the energy level and because of charge
transitions from one ion to another. A major source of attenuation is from transition of metal impurity ions
such as iron, chromium, cobalt and copper. These losses can be up to 1 to 10 dB/km. The effect of metallic
impurities can be reduced by glass refining techniques.

Another major extrinsic loss is caused by absorption due to OH (Hydroxil) ions impurities dissolved in
glass. Vibrations occur at wavelengths between 2.7 and 4.2 μm. The absorption peaks occur at 1400, 950
and 750 nm. These are first, second and third overtones respectively shown in fig below. Between these
absorption peaks there are regions of low attenuation.

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 6.1 Intrinsic Absorption

Intrinsic absorption occurs when material is in absolutely pure state, no density variation and
inhomogeneities. Thus, intrinsic absorption sets the fundamental lower limit on absorption for any
particular material. Intrinsic absorption results from electronic absorption bands in UV region and from
atomic vibration bands in the near infrared region.

3. Scattering Losses

Scattering losses exists in optical fibers because of microscopic variations in the material density and
composition. As glass is composed by randomly connected network of molecules and several oxides (e.g.
Sio2, Geo2 and P2o5), these are the major cause of compositional structure fluctuation. The following two
effects results to variation in refractive index and Rayleigh type scattering of light.
 The first is due to slight fluctuation in mixing of ingredients. The random changes because of this
are impossible to eliminate completely.
 The other cause is slight change in density as the silica cools and solidifies. When light ray strikes
such zones, it gets scattered in all directions. The amount of scatter depends on the size of the
discontinuity compared with the wavelength of the light so the shortest wavelength (highest
frequency) suffers most scattering.

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There are two types of scattering i) Rayleigh Scattering ii) MIE scattering

7.1 Rayleigh Scattering Losses

Rayleigh scattering of light is due to small localized changes in the refractive index of the core and
cladding material. There are two causes during the manufacturing of fiber.

Figure 1 Graph of Wavelength v/s Rayleigh Scattering

Scattering for a single component glass is given by

8𝜋 3 2
𝛼𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑡 = (𝑛 − 1)2 𝑘𝐵 𝑇𝑓 𝛽𝑇 𝑛𝑒𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠
3𝜆4
Where:

N = refractive index

𝑘𝐵 = Boltzmann constant

𝛽𝑇 = isothermal compressibility of the material

𝑇𝑓 = fictive temperature- which is the temperature at which the density fluctuations are frozen.

This equation can also be expressed as:

8𝜋 3 8 2
𝛼𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑡 = 4 𝑛 𝑝 𝑘𝐵 𝑇𝑓 𝛽𝑇 𝑛𝑒𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠
3𝜆
Where 𝑝 is the photoelastic constant.

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For the case of multicomponent glass, the scattering is given by:

8𝜋 3 2 2
𝛼𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑡 = 4 (𝛿𝑛 ) 𝛿𝑣 𝑛𝑒𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠
3𝜆
Where 𝛿𝑛2 is the mean square refractive index fluctuation and 𝛿𝑣 is the volume of the fiber.

 Multimode fibers have higher dopant concentrations and greater compositional fluctuations.
The overall losses in these fibers are more compared to single mode fibers.

8.1 Mie Scattering:

Linear scattering also occurs at inhomogeneities and these arise from imperfections in the fiber’s
geometry, irregularities in the refractive index and the presence of bubbles etc. caused during
manufacture. Careful control of manufacturing process can reduce MIE scattering to insignificant
levels.

4. Bending Loss

 Losses due to curvature and losses caused by an abrupt change in radius of curvature are
referred to as ‘bending losses.’
 The sharp bend of a fiber causes significant radiative losses and there is also possibility of
mechanical failure

As the core bends the normal will follow it and the ray will now find itself on the wrong side of
critical angle and will escape.

The radiation loss from a bent fiber depends on –

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 i) Field strength of certain critical distance 𝑥𝑐 from fiber axis where power is lost through
radiation.
ii) The radius of curvature R.
The higher order modes are less tightly bound to the fiber core, the higher order modes radiate out of
fiber firstly. For multimode fiber, the effective number of modes that can be guided by curved fiber is
given expression:

𝛼+2 2𝑎 2 2/3
𝑁𝑒𝑓𝑓 = 𝑁∞ {1 − 2𝛼∆ [ 𝑅 + (2𝑛 ) ]}
2 𝑘𝑅

where,
α: is graded index profile.
Δ: is core – cladding index difference.
n2: is refractive index of cladding.
2𝜋
k: is wave propagation constant =
𝜆
N∞: is total number of modes in a straight fiber

𝛼
𝑁∞ = (𝑛 𝑘𝑎)2 ∆
𝛼+2 1

The sharp bends are therefore avoided. There are two types of Bending Losses: (a) Micro Bending
(b) Macro Bending

9.1 Microbending

 Microbending is a loss due to small bending or distortions This small micro bending is not
visible. The losses due to this are temperature related, tensile related or crush related'
 The effects of microbending on multimode fiber can result in increasing attenuation
(depending on wavelength) to a series of periodic peaks and troughs on the spectral
attenuation curve.
 These effects can be minimized during installation and testing.

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 Figure 2Microbanding

10.1 Macrobending

 The change in spectral attenuation caused by macrobending is different to microbending.

 Usually there are no peaks and troughs because in a macrobending no light is coupled back into
the core from the cladding as can happen in the case of microbends.
 The macrobending losses are caused by large scale bending of fiber. The losses are eliminated
when the bends are straightened.

Figure 3macrobending

5. Dispersion

The pulse gets distorted as it travels along the fiber lengths. Pulse spreading in fiber is referred as
dispersion.
Dispersion is caused by difference in the propagation times of light rays that takes different paths
during the propagation. The light pulses travelling down the fiber encounter dispersion effect because
of this the pulse spreads out in time domain. Dispersion limits the information bandwidth. The
distortion effects can be analyzed by studying the group velocities in guided modes.

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There are two types of Dispersions:

i) Intra modal Dispersion: Dispersion is single mode fibers

ii) Inter Modal Dispersion: Dispersion in Multimode Fibers

Fig : dispersion in an optical fiber

 Fig shows, after travelling some distance, pulse starts broadening and overlap with the
neighboring pulses.
 At certain distance the pulses are not even distinguishable and error will occur at receiver.
 The information capacity is specified by bandwidth-distance product (MHz. km). For step
index bandwidth distance product is 20 MHz. km and for graded index it is 2.5 MHz. km.

11.1 Group Delay

 Consider a fiber cable carrying optical signal equally with various modes and each mode contains
all the spectral components in the wavelength band.
 All the spectral components travel independently and they observe different time delay and
group delay in the direction of propagation.
 The velocity at which the energy in a pulse travels along the fiber is known as group velocity.
𝜕𝜔
Group velocity is given by: 𝑣𝑔 = 𝜕𝛽

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  Thus, different frequency components in a signal will travel at different group velocities and so
will arrive at their destination at different times, for digital modulation of carrier, this results in
dispersion of pulse, which affects the maximum rate of modulation. Let the difference in
propagation times for two side bands is δτ.

𝑑𝜏
𝛿𝜏 = 𝑑𝜆 𝑥 𝛿𝜆

Where: 𝛿𝜏: is the wavelength difference between upper and lower sideband (spectral width)
𝑑𝜏
: is the Dispersion coefficient (D)
𝑑𝜆

1 𝑑𝜏
Hence it means: 𝐷 = 𝐿 . 𝑑𝜆, where L is the fiber length.

𝑑 1 1
𝐷 = 𝑑𝜆 (𝑉 ) because 𝜏 = 𝑉 and considering the unit length L = 1
𝑔 𝑔

1 𝑑𝛽 𝑑𝜆 𝑑𝛽 1 −𝜆2 𝑑𝛽
Now = 𝑑𝜔 = 𝑑𝜔 . 𝑑𝜆 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑠 = .
𝑉𝑔 𝑉𝑔 2𝜋𝑐 𝑑𝜆

𝑑 −𝜆2 𝑑𝛽
𝐷 = 𝑑𝜆 (2𝜋𝑐 . 𝑑𝜆 )

Dispersion is measured in picoseconds per nanometer per kilometer

12.1 Material Dispersion / intramodal dispersion

 Material dispersion is also called as chromatic dispersion. Material dispersion exists due to change
in index of refraction for different wavelengths.
 A light ray contains components of various wavelengths centered at wavelength λ0. The time
delay is different for different wavelength components.
 This results in time dispersion of pulse at the receiving end of fiber
 This is shown in fig below.

The material dispersion for unit length (L = 1) is given by

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 𝜆 𝑑2𝑛
𝐷𝑚𝑎𝑡 = − . 2
𝑐 𝑑𝜆
Where: c: is the velocity of light;
𝜆: is the center wavelength
𝑑2 𝑛
𝑑𝜆2
: is the second derivative of the refractive index with wavelength
Negative sign shows that the upper sideband signal (lowest wavelength) arrives before the lower
sideband (highest wavelength).

Figure 4refractive index as a function of wavelength

13.1 Waveguide Dispersion

 Waveguide dispersion is caused by the difference in the index of refraction between the core and
cladding, resulting in a ‘drag’ effect between the core and cladding portions of the power.
 Waveguide dispersion is significant only in fibers carrying fewer than 5-10 modes and as such
since multimode optical fibers carry hundreds of modes, they will not have observable waveguide
dispersion.
 The group delay (τwg) arising due to waveguide dispersion is given as:

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 𝐿 𝑑(𝑘𝑏)
𝜏𝑤𝑔 = [𝑛2 + 𝑛2 ∆ ]
𝑐 𝑑𝑘

Where b: normalized propagation constant

k group velocity 𝑘 = 2𝜋/𝜆
𝑑(𝑘𝑏)
𝑑𝑘
Waveguide dispersion and is a mode dependent term
As frequency is a function of wavelength, the group velocity of energy varies with frequency. This
produces additional losses.
Silica has an estimated fictive temperature of 1400K with isothermal compressibility of 7 ×
10−11 𝑚2 𝑁 −1 . The refractive index and the photoelastic coefficient for silica are 1.46 and 0.286
respectively. Determine the theoretical attenuation in dB/km due to the fundamental Rayleigh
scattering in silica at optical wavelengths 850 nm.
14.1 Chromatic dispersion
 The combination of material dispersion and waveguide dispersion is called chromatic
dispersion.
 These loses primarily concern the spectral width of the transmitter and choice of the
operational wavelength
 The graph of effective refractive index against wavelength illustrates the effects of material,
chromatic and waveguide dispersion.

 Material dispersion and waveguide dispersion effects vary in opposite as the wavelength is
increased, but at an optimum wavelength around 1300 nm, the two effects almost cancel each
other and chromatic dispersion is at minimum.
 Attenuation is therefore minimum and makes 1300 nm a highly attractive operating window.

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6. Modal dispersion
 As only a certain number of modes can propagate in a fiber, each of these modes carry the
modulated signal and further each is incident on the boundary at different angles hence they each
have their individual propagation times.
 The net effect is spreading the pulse and this form of dispersion is called modal dispersion
 Modal dispersion takes place in multimode fibers and is moderately present in graded index fibers
and almost absent in single mode step index fibers.
 Modal dispersion is given by
𝑛1 𝑧 Δ
Δ𝑡𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑎𝑙 = ( ) (1)
𝑐 1−Δ

Where Δ𝑡𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑎𝑙 = dispersion

𝑛1 : is the core refractive index

𝑧 : is the total fiber length

C: is the velocity of light in air

𝑛1−𝑛2
Δ : is the fractional refractive index Δ =
𝑛1

Also this dispersion can be expressed as:

(𝑁𝐴)2 𝑧
Δ𝑡𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑎𝑙 = (2)
2𝑛1 𝑐

 The modal dispersion Δ𝑡𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑎𝑙 describes the optical pulse spreading due to modal effects optical
pulse width can be converted to electrical rise time through the relation:
𝑡𝑟,𝑚𝑜𝑑 = 0.44(Δ𝑡𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑎𝑙 ) (3)

Signal distortion in single mode fibers

 The pulse spreading 𝜎𝜔𝑔 over a range of wavelengths can be obtained from the derivative
of the group delay with respect to wavelength as:
𝑑𝜏𝜔𝑔
𝜎𝜔𝑔 = | |𝜎
𝑑𝜆 𝜆

= 𝐿|𝐷𝜔𝑔 (𝜆)|𝜎𝜆

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 𝑉 𝑑𝜏𝜔𝑔
= | |𝜎
𝜆 𝑑𝜆 𝜆

𝑛2 𝐿Δ𝜎𝜆 𝑑 2 (𝑉𝑏)
= |𝑉 |
𝑐𝜆 𝑑𝑣 2
Where
𝑛2 Δ 𝑑 2 (𝑉𝑏)
𝐷𝜔𝑔 (𝜆) = − |𝑉 |
𝑐𝜆 𝑑𝑣 2
This is the equation for waveguide dispersion for a unit length.

15.1 Polarization mode dispersion (PMD)

 Different frequency components of a pulse acquires different polarization states such as
linear and circular polarization. This results in pulse broadening known as polarization
dispersion (PMD).
 PMD is a limiting factor for optical communication systems at high data rates and henc its
effects must be compensated.

7. Mode coupling

 After a certain initial length, the pulse distortion decreases because of mode coupling. The energy
from one mode is coupled to other modes because of the following
Structural imperfections
Fiber diameter variations
Refractive index variations
Microbends in the fiber cable
Due to mode coupling, the average propagation delay reduces and intermodal distortion reduces.

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