OPTICAL

COMMUNICATION
History & Introduction

WHY OPTICAL COMMUNICATION?

Figure of merit of communication s/m defined in terms of bit ratedistance product(BL).

CONTD.

By 1970, communication s/m with BL 100Mb/s-km was available.

By second half of twentieth century it was realized that increase in

BL product would be possible if optical waves were used as carrier.

In 1960, the invention of laser solved the problem. Then how to

transmit light?(Theodore Harold Maiman)

In1966, a suggestion came that optical fibers(OF) might be best

choice to guide light similar to that of electrons in copper wire. Main
draw back was high loss of fiber(1000dB/km).

CONTD.

In 1970 a break through occurred; fiber losses were reduced to

below 20dB/km near 1m wavelength region.

At the same time GaAs semiconductor lasers also were

demonstrated.

The availability of low loss OF and compact optical sources led to

world wide effort for developing FOC s/m.

Now optical fiber is the backbone of modern communication

network.

CONTD

Optical fiber carries

Almost all long distance phone calls
Most Internet traffic (Dial-up, DSL or Cable)
Most Television channels (Cable or DSL)

One fiber can carry up to 6.4 Tb/s (1012 b/s) or 100 million
conversations simultaneously

Information revolution wouldnt have happened without the Optical

Fiber

EVOLUTION OF LIGHTWAVE SYSTEMS

First Generation Lightwave Systems

Operated near 0.08m region
GaAs lasers used
Bit rate of 45Mb/s
Repeater spacing of upto 10km.

Limitations:
Fiber attenuation
Intermodal dispersion

Deployed since 1974

CONTD.

Second Generation Systems

Operated near 1.3m region(loss below 1dB/km).
1.3 m multi-mode semiconductor lasers
Single-mode, low-attenuation silica fibers

Limitations
Bit rate limited below 100Mb/s due to multimode fiber dispersion.
Repeater spacing limited by fiber losses in 1.3m.

Deployed since 1978

CONTD.

Third generation system

1.55 m single-mode semiconductor lasers
Single-mode, low-attenuation silica fibers

Limitations:
Fiber attenuation (repeater spacing 40 km)
Fiber dispersion

Deployed since 1982

CONTD.

Fourth generation s/m

1.55 m single-mode, narrow-band semiconductor lasers(low
fiber loss, but high dispersion)
Single-mode, low-attenuation, dispersion-shifted silica fibers
Wavelength-division multiplexing of 2.5 Gb/s or 10 Gb/s signals
Development of EDFA

Limitations
Non-linear effects limits
Signal launch power
Propagation distance without regeneration
WDM channel separation
Maximum number of WDM channels per fiber

EVOLUTION OF OPTICAL NETWORKS

Lowest Attenuation C band 1550 nm, the most used

Guided Light
John Tyndall demonstrated in 1870 that
Light can be bent
This can be considered the first demo of
Guided light propagation

Total Internal Reflection (TIR) is the basic idea of fiber optic