ECE 571

Optical Fiber Communication

Chapter 3:
Fiber Optic Cables (3)

Dr. Ashraf Eltholth - Dr.-Ing. Saleh Hussin

Misr International University

Ch 3: Fiber Optic Cables Electronics and Communication Engineering Department Page 1
Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Transmission Rate Limitations
• Pulse spreading reduces the information rate of any
transmission system due to the effect of inter symbol
interference (ISI).
• Dispersion is generally divided into two categories:
– Modal dispersion
– Chromatic dispersion.
• Modal dispersion:
– is defined as pulse spreading caused by the time delay between
lower-order modes (modes or rays propagating straight through the
fiber close to the optical axis) and higher-order modes (modes
propagating at steeper angles).
– Modal dispersion is problematic in multimode fiber, causing
bandwidth limitation, but it is not a problem in single-mode fiber
where only one mode is allowed to propagate.

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Transmission Rate Limitations

• Chromatic dispersion:
– is pulse spreading due to the fact that different wavelengths of light
propagate at slightly different velocities through the fiber. All light
sources, whether laser or LED, have finite linewidths, which means
they emit more than one wavelength.
– Because the index of refraction of glass fiber is a wavelength-
dependent quantity, different wavelengths propagate at different
velocities.

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Transmission Rate Limitations
• We
  focus the spreads generated by material dispersion of
the fiber cables.
• Consider a sinusoidal beam, with frequency and a period .
• When two analog optical wavelengths , are radiated. The
two signals won’t arrive at the same time.
• At the beginning of the link, the two light are in phase ( zero
delay).
• After a while; due to dispersion;
each wavelength will come with
different delays resulting in a delay .

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Transmission Rate Limitations
• If
  both waves are antiphase; almost cancelling each other.
• The delay between the two waveforms has to be for partial
cancellation.
• The maximum allowed pulse spreading

Or the modulating frequency is limited to

• This frequency can be considered the 3 dB bandwidth of

the signal to be transmitted .

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Transmission Rate Limitations
•  For Gaussian sources:

• The frequency-length limit for uniform source is given by:

• While the frequency-length limit for Gaussian source is

given by:

• Whereis the difference in the travel time per unit length.

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Transmission Rate Limitations

•  The spreading will imply another type of attenuation

• : Fixed losses occur due to absorption and scattering.

• : Losses due to modulation frequency.
• For Gaussian beam:

• If , .
• If , (1.5 dB optical bandwidth)
– optical domain

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
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Transmission Rate Limitations

•  Optical-Electrical correspondence

• corresponds to the frequency at which the electrical power

in the receiver diminishes by half.

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Rate-Length in Digital Signals
• In
  Return-to-Zero (RZ)
• is pulse duration

• In Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ)

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Example
• A
  pure silica optical fiber cable is coupled to a LED
operating at and having 20 nm spectral width. The cable
length is 10 km long. Let . Find:
– ,
• Sol.:

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Polarization
• Light as an electromagnetic (electrical and magnetic)
wave which are always perpendicular.
• The polarization is defined as the direction of oscillation
of the electric field.
• If the electric field direction changes randomly, the wave
is unpolarized.
• The direction of the polarization is determined by the
light source.
• Polarized light can be classified into three types:
1. Linear polarization: the electric field of light is confined to a
single plane along the direction of propagation.

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Polarization
2. Circular polarization: the electric field of light consists of two
linear components that are perpendicular to each other, equal
in amplitude, but have a phase difference of π/2. The resulting
electric field rotates in a circle around the direction of
propagation and, depending on the rotation direction, is called
left- or right-hand circularly polarized light.

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Polarization
3. Elliptical polarization: the electric field of light describes an
ellipse. This results from the combination of two linear
components with differing amplitudes and/or a phase difference
that is not π/2.

• If a wave is travelling in the z-direction, and the electric

field vector poistion
Ch 3: Fiber Optic Cables
theUniversity
Misr International x-direction, it is linearly polarized
Electronics and Communication Engineering Department Page 13

in x-direction. Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh

Hussin
Polarization
• If two waves travel in the z-direction, one polarized in the
x-direction and the other is polarized in y-direction, they
would be independent of each other.
• The term mode refers to
the different ways that a
wave can travel in given
directions.
• Plane of incidence: it is a
plane specified by the
normal to the boundary
and the direction of travel
of the incident wave.

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Polarization

• The two orthogonal linear polarization states that are

most important for reflection and transmission are
referred to as p- and s-polarization.
– P-polarized (from the German parallel) light has an electric field
polarized parallel to the plane of incidence.
– S-polarized (from the German senkrecht) light is perpendicular
to incidence plane.

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Reflection at a boundary plane
• There
  is an amount of light reflected at the boundary
between two dielectrics.
• Reflecting surfaces occur at:
1. The air-to-glass boundary (source to fiber cable interface).
2. The interface between the fiber core and clad.
3. The air gap between two connected fibers.
• Light reflected at the input and connected gap should be
small as they reduce the power being transmitted.
• The internal reflection at the core boundary should be
high to keep the light inside the fiber.
• The reflection coefficient is the ratio of the reflected
electric field to the incident electric field.

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Hussin
Reflection at a boundary plane
•  For normal incidence:

• where is the refractive index in the incident region and

is the index in the transmitted region.
• If , then is negative which means between incident and
reflected electric fields.
• The reflectance is the ratio of the reflected beam
intensity to the incident beam intensity.
• The intensity of the an optic beam is proportional to the
square of its electric field

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Reflection at a boundary plane

• Roughly
  speaking there is 0.2dB loss when light enters
the glass from air, then 0.4dB for both fiber cables ends.
• For P-polarization:

• For S-polarization:

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Reflectance

• Some features for reflection of

light between two dielectrics:
1. The reflectance does not vary
great deal for incident angles
near zero.
2. The reflectance is zero (full
transmission) for certain
incident angles and polarization
states.
3. The reflectance is unity (total
reflection) for range of incident   Reflectance at an glass –to-air
angles. interface and

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Brewster angle

•  The case of zero reflection:

• The numerator should equals to zero:

• which occurs at Brewster angle:

• Note that there is no incidence angles that causes

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Brewster angle

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Anti-Reflection Coating

• To
  reduce the amount of reflection between two dielectrics
of and , an thin antireflection (AR) coating of index and
thickness /4 can be placed at the interface between them
where

and the reflectance is

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Critical Angle Reflection

• There
  is a total reflection for incident angles greater than
a particular value known as the critical angle
• For and

• The angle satisfying this equation is the critical angle,

• Because the sine function is never greater than 1, it is

clear that must be greater than .

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Critical Angle Reflection

• If
  , then both and are complex with a magnitude of
unity which mean total internal reflection.

Misr International University

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Mode Theory for Cylindrical Waveguide

• To
  analyze the optical wave propagation within a fiber
cable, Maxwell equations have to be solved subject to
cylindrical boundary conditions at the core-cladding
interface.
• The core-cladding boundary conditions lead to coupling
of electric and magnetic field components resulting in
Hybrid modes.
• Modes mean different configuration of magnetic and
electric field.
• The lowest two orders are , and .

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Mode Theory for Cylindrical Waveguide

Normalized propagation constant b vs. normalized frequency V

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Hussin
V Number
• V
  Number: a normalized frequency parameter, which
determines the number of modes of a step-index fiber.

– : Numerical aperture
– a: Core in radius
– : free space wavelength
– : core refractive index
– cladding refractive index
• For single mode transmission

• This is controlled by varying a, &

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Number of Modes

• The
  Number of propagating modes within the fiber cable is
calculated as:

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Example
• A
  step index multimode fiber with NA = 0.2, supports
approximately 1000 modes at
– What is the diameter of the core.
– How many modes does the fiber support at
– How many modes does the fiber support at
• Sol.:

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Cladding Power

•  
• The cladding will absorb some optical power, as given by:

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Dr. Ashraf Eltholth & Dr.-Ing. Saleh
Hussin
Assignment 3

  step index optical fiber with core radius of 30 m, and

• A
operating at = 1.3 m, let ; .
– Compute the number of modes propagating inside the cable.
– Compute the percentage of cladding power to the total power.
– Estimate the core radius for the single mode condition.

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 Thanks for your attention

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