Dispersion Measurement

Understanding, processing, and

recommending

Objectives
After completing this program you will be able to:
Understand origin of the dispersion.
Explain Importance of dispersion measurement.
Characterize some dispersion measurement techniques include:

Hilbert transform method,

Interferometric methods, and
Conventional phase-shift technique.
Estimate expectation of dispersion measurements.

Dispersion
There are different opinions about who first discovered dispersion.
The dispersion question is originally from the rainbow.
The most popular experiment of dispersion discovery was done by

Newton at 1666.
Dispersion is one of the properties of the light.
The discovery of dispersion phenomenon was of

great significance to the development of the current

photographic optics.

Newtons experiment
While studying the images of heavenly bodies formed by a lens,

Newton found that the images were colored at the edges.

To investigate this, he performed an experiment using a prism.
Newton darkened his room and allowed a beam of sunlight to pass

through a small circular hole.

He then placed a triangular prism in the path of the beam of light, see

next slide.

Newtons experiment

Then, the white light was split into seven

colors which resembled the colors of a
rainbow.

This process of splitting of white light

into its constituent colors when it is
passed through a transparent medium is
known as Dispersion.

With such an astonishing experiment

done by newton, yet he failed to
recognize the material dependence of the
dispersion.

Fig. 1. Prism spreading white light into spectrum

of light

Dispersion after Newton

Later on people realized that dispersion occurs whenever there is a

process that changes the direction of light in a manner that depends on

wavelength.
For a given medium, n increases as wavelength decreases and is greatest

for violet light.

People are studying this phenomenon with respect to the material, for

example Dispersion of waves on water was studied by Pierre-Simon

Laplace in 1776.
In order to evaluate the amount of dispersion we are facing, given a

material, we need a measurement.

Importance of dispersion measurement

The growing number of femtosecond lasers in industry, medicine,

and communications.
Femtosecond lasers are particularly sensitive to dispersion, even

beyond first order.

Pulse duration is a very important parameter in femtosecond laser

applications, for example, laser eye surgery.

All the laser surgeries can be greatly improved using the shortest

femtosecond laser pulses.

Accuracy has the highest rank in the surgery.

Dispersion measurements
Dispersion measurements give an indication of the distortion to optical

signals as they propagate down optical fibers.

It limits the information-carrying capacity of the fiber.
It is the most important transmission characteristic of an optical fiber.
There are many techniques to measure the dispersion of an optical fiber.
In general, these techniques can be classified into three categories:
The time-of-flight (TOF) method,
The modulation phase shift (MPS) method, and
The optical interferometry-based methods.

Dispersion measurements
The TOF method is the most direct way to measure dispersion.
The pulse source is filtered by a tunable optical filter or a

monochromator.
Electrical pulse with different time delays are measured. Which are

used to calculate the dispersion of the fiber under test.

The MPS method is a well-established technique and has become an

industrial standard for dispersion measurement.

It requires expensive vector network analyzer to measure the

electrical phase response.

10

Dispersion measurements
The optical-interferometry-based method has the highest measurement

accuracy.
Here, the length of the fiber under test is typically limited to a few meters.
Abedin et al. proposed a method to measure dispersion of a long fiber.
Now, we are going to focus on three basic techniques for dispersion

measurement. These are:

Hilbert transform method,
Interferometric methods, and
Conventional phase-shift technique

11

Hilbert transform method

The amplitude and the phase response of an optical filter are related via

the Hilbert transform.

To assure this relation is valid, the filter must fulfill a so-called minimum

phase condition.
Phase response and then the dispersion can be calculated directly from the

measured amplitude response.

However, the minimum phase condition does not hold for component

including various types of apodized or chirped fiber.

Reconstruction of the phase information from the measured amplitude

response is not possible.

12

Interferometric methods
Here measuring the transmission time through the components are applied.
The measurement setups are typically based on Michelson or Mach-Zehnder

interferometers.
The principle of Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) based dispersion

measurement is shown in Fig. 2.

Input light is divided into two beams by an input beam splitter(BS).
One beam is launched into a reference fiber, whose group delay spectrum

is carefully calibrated.
The second beam is launched into the test fiber of approximately same

length as the reference fiber.

13

Theory of MZI
At the output, the two beams are combined into a single beam,

which is fed through a detector.

The detector cross-correlates the test beam relative to the
reference beam.
The cross-correlation produces an interference pattern between
the test and reference beams, which is measured to determine the
group delay spectrum of the test fiber relative to reference fiber.

Fig. 2. Principle of Mach-Zehnder interferometer

(MZI) based technique of dispersion measurement of optical fiber.
Here, L is the path difference between the
test and reference fiber due to dispersion.

14

Realizing MZI
We realize the MZI structure by the set-up shown in Fig. 3.
The tunable laser source produces light over the desired wavelength range.
A sinusoidal signal, of frequency rad/s, is used to amplitude modulate the

light beam by an external travelling wave intensity modulator,MOD-1.

The intensity of the light beam at the output of
MOD-1 is:

I1 = Ii[1 + m1 cos(t)]

Fig. 3. Realizing Mach-Zehnder interferometer using

optical intensity modulators.

15

Realizing MZI
Where, Ii is the intensity of the laser, which is constant for all wavelengths,

and m1 is the modulation index of MOD-1.

The modulated light beam is launched into the test fiber of length L. The

optical fiber introduces a wavelength dependent group delay, g() so that

different wavelength components of the modulated light beam travel at
different velocities.
At the output of the fiber, the intensity of light beam becomes:

I2() = I1[1 + m1 cos((t - g))]

The light beam from the fiber is amplitude modulated by a local oscillator of

frequency rad/s and synchronized to the transmitter.

The output of the second modulator, MOD-2 is given by:

16

Realizing MZI
I2 = [1 + m1 cos(t)] x I1[1 + m1 cos((t - g))]

= I1[1+ cos() + cos(2t - g) + m1 cos(t) +m2cos(t)].

We see from this last result that the combination of MOD-1, fiber and

MOD-2 acts as an MZI with the second modulator cross-correlating the

light beam from the first modulator to produce an interference pattern.
The output of MOD-2 is applied to the detector and the average term is

extracted
By measuring the intensity of the modulator output with and without

modulation, we estimate the group delay g() by solving the average term.

17

Experimental set up

Fig. 4. Experimental setup to measure dispersion using intensity modulators. The

second modulator .beats. the signal from the first modulator creating an
interference pattern. By measuring the power with and without modulation, the
group delay spectrum is estimated.

18

Conventional phase-shift technique

A basic measurement setup for the phase-shift technique is

outlined in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5. Experimental setup to measure dispersion using the

phase-shift technique

19

Conventional phase-shift technique

The light from a tunable laser is intensity modulated with a sinusoidal

signal.
The modulation generates sidebands on both sides of the optical carrier.
The sidebands will experience a phase shift when the modulated light

passes through the device under test.

The phase shift of the detected signal allows the group delay of the

component to be determined.
The basic setup and variations of it using different light sources have

been utilized for measurements of the dispersion of an optical fiber for

years.

20

Conclusion
Dispersion is major problem in optical communications.
It is highly dependent on the material.
People have been studying this phenomena for long time with respect

to the materials.
To solve this problem we need to understand it first through

measuring.
There are many different techniques for dispersion measurements.
All techniques have in common calculating the group delay velocity.
Try to think it by new way?

21

References
L. G. Cohen, Comparison of single mode fiber dispersion

measurement techniques, J. Lightwave Technol., LT-3.

B. J. Ainslie and C. R. Day, A review of single-mode fibers

with modified dispersion characteristics, J. Lightwave

Technol.
JOHN M. SENIOR, third edition, Optical Fibre

Communications Principles and Practice

22

End