WDM Basics - Topics

 Fiber Principles
 Optical Transmission System
 Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM)
 Wavelength Channel Spacing
 WDM Optical Components/Devices
 Transmitter, Receiver, Amplifier, Multiplexer,
Demultiplexer, Line Terminal, Add Drop Multiplexer,
Crossconnect

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References
 C. Siva Ram Murthy and Mohan Gurusamy,
WDM Optical Networks: Concepts, Design,
and Algorithms, Prentice Hall PTR, November
2001. (Figures and most of the contents from
this) Key reference
 • R. Ramaswami and K. N. Sivarajan, Optical
Networks: A Practical Perspective, Morgan
Kaufmann Publishers, 1998, 2002, 2010.

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Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM)

 Need for Tb/s networks

 Explosive growth of Internet traffic, High bandwidth applications
such as multimedia, video-conferencing, backup, social
media ,medical imaging and supercomputer visualization
 Existing networks
 Use optical fiber as a replacement for copper
 Electronic bottleneck (a few Gb/s)
 Wavelength division multiplexing
 Divides bandwidth on a fiber into several non-overlapping
channels (wavelengths)
 Simultaneous message transmission on different wavelengths on
the same fiber

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 Optical Fiber Principles
 Fiber is a thin cylinder of glass (core) surrounded by concentric layer of glass
(cladding), protected by thin plastic jacket (Figure 1)
 Total internal reflection (Figure 1)
 If the angle is below critical angle the ray is reflected internally
 Multimode fiber (Figure 2 a)
 Core is thick, about 50 microns
 Different rays are bouncing at different angles leading to multiple modes
 Maximum bit rate is of the order of a few hundred Mbps
 Less expensive
 Single-mode fiber (Figure 2 b)
 Core is very narrow (8 microns) , fiber acts like a waveguide, light traverses in a
straight line
 Can transmit at the rate of several Gbps
 More expensive

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 Figure 1

(a) (b)

Figure 1: (a) Optical fiber. (b) Reflection in fiber.

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 Figure 2

(a) (b)

Figure 2: (a) Multimode fiber (multiple rays follow different paths). (b) Single-mode
fiber (only direct path propagates in fiber).

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 Basic Optical Transmission
System
 Refer Figure 3
 Optical Transmitter
 Light source (LED or Laser) is modulated according to the electric

signal to produce on/off light pulses

 Optical Receiver
 Photodetector (eg. Photodiode) receives optical signal and produces
electric signal
 Electrical Regenerator
 To boost signal strength
 converts optical signal to electrical signal, regenerates optical signal

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 Figure 3

Figure 3: Optical transmission

system.

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 Attenuation vs. Wavelength

 Different wavelengths suffer different levels of attenuation (power

loss) (Refer Figure 4)
 Three low loss windows (bands) centered at 0.85, 1.30, and 1.55
microns
 Early systems use 0.85 micron band and operate at a few tens of
Mbps, use LED as light source
 Present systems operate in 1.30 and 1.55 micron bands, use laser light
source, operate at a few Gbps
 WDM systems usually operate in 1.55 micron band surrounding which
25 THz bandwidth is available. Attenuation is below 0.2 dB/km

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 Figure 4

Figure 4: Attenuation versus wavelength for optical

fiber.
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WDM- Wavelength or Frequency Grid
 If c, f,  denote speed of light in free space, frequency,
and wavelength of optical signal, respectively, then c = f 
 Speed of light in fiber is 2108 m/s, we use the ideal case
of c = 3108 m/s for the calculations unless otherwise
specified
 Center wavelength 0 1.55 micron corresponds to 193 THz
 Differentiating f w.r.t  around 0 gives
f = - (c / 02 ) , for a small 
f - frequency spacing between two signals
 - wavelength spacing between two signals
for  = 0.8 nm, f is around 100 GHz

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 100 GHz Grid
 Refer Figure 5
 In communication systems
 bandwidth refers to width of (power) spectrum, measured in the
frequency or wavelength domain.
 Bit rate refers to number of bits transmitted per second
 In computer networks
 Bandwidth and bit rate are used interchangeably to refer to number
of bits per second
 Spectral efficiency = bit rate/bandwidth (0.4 is common in optical
systems)
 Signal operates at 10 Gbps uses up 25 GHz which is sufficiently lower
than 100 GHz spacing to reduce the interference between two adjacent
channels

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Figure 5

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 WDM transmission system
 Divide available spectrum (bandwidth) centered at 1.55 micron into
hundreds of wavelength channels with spacing of about 100GHz or
0.8 nm
 Simultaneous transmission of signals each on a different wavelength
on a fiber link (Refer Figure 6)
 Every wavelength operates at the peak electronic rate of a few Gbps
independent of other wavelengths
 Optical (wavelength) multiplexers and demultiplexers are used to
combine and separate several hundreds of wavelengths
 Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs)
 Amplify all the wavelengths at the same time regardless of their
modulation methods, bit rates, and power levels
 Placed at a distance of 120 km as against 40 km in case of electric
regenerators

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 WDM vs. multifiber non-WDM
 Assume a traffic requirement of W wavelengths on a link
 WDM system cost
 One multiplexer
 One fiber
 One demultiplexer
 EDFA amplifiers at every 120 km
 Multifiber non-WDM system cost
 W fibers
 Electric regenerators at every 40 km for every fiber (or
wavelength)

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 Figure 6

Figure 6: Wavelength division multiplexing.

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 WDM Network Elements
 LT- Line terminal- multiplexing and demultiplexing all the
wavelengths (say W)
 Requires W transponders or W wavelength ports (transmitters and
receivers).
 WADM: wavelength add drop multiplexer- selectively add/drop
wavelengths, allow optical bypassing of signal between a fixed input
fiber and output fiber
 WXC: wavelength cross-connects- selectively add, drop wavelengths
and and also switch a wavelength from any fiber to any other fiber
 WADMs and WXCs require fewer ports (determined by wavelengths
dropped or added)

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WDM Point-to-Point Networks
 Use WDM point-to-point links (Figure 7)
 Use line terminals (LT) at every node
 LT: demultiplexer + multiplexer
 Demultiplex all wavelengths from input link (signal), multiplex all
wavelengths onto output link (or signal)
 At every node, transponders or transmitters/receivers at wavelength
ports are required to drop/add all wavelengths
 Opto-electric-opto (o-e-o) conversion at every node for every
wavelength. Requires large buffer and high electronic processing
capacity
 Receiver: optical- to electrical and transmitter: electrical to optical conversion
 Easy implementation
 Early WDM networks come under this category
 Cost effective if the transit traffic is not large
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 Figure 7

Figure 7: WDM point-to-point link.

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 Transponders
 WDM Optical Networks carry traffic from Client Networks such as IP, SONET,
ATM, and Ethernet
 WDM Optical networks use wavelengths which conform to the standards set by
ITU (International Telecommunications Union)
 Client network elements use non ITU wavelengths and also use different kinds of
lasers as compared to WDM network elements
 Transponders convert the client signals (on non ITU wavelengths) to the signals
suitable for use in the WDM networks and vice versa
 Typically, a transponder is a o-e-o (optical-electrical-optical) based wavelength
conversion device. (Refer the figure in the next page)
 It has one pair of Tx/Rx
 One Rx/Tx is used to convert the client signal to a suitable signal for transmission on
a WDM link
 Another Rx/Tx is used to convert the signal from a WDM link to a suitable signal for a
client device

 Transponders are expensive and consume more power. It is desirable to

minimize the use of transponders (i.e. o-e-o conversions). Optical transponders
(or converters: optical signal to optical signal converters) are more expensive
and not used commercially

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Use of Transponders

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 Wavelength Add/Drop Multiplexers
(WADMs)
 add wavelength: transmit a signal (electrical-optical conversion)
 drop wavelength: receive a wavelength (optical-electrical conversion)
 Allow optical bypassing of transit traffic
 forward a wavelength from an input link to an output link in the oprical form
without requiring o-e-o conversion
 Selectively drop and add wavelengths between fixed input-output
fiber pair
 Built from multiplexers, demultiplexers and 22 switches (Refer
Figure 8)
 The switch can be in a “bar”or “cross”state
 Fewer ports and router processing capacity requirements (ports and
router processing not required for transit traffic)
 More suitable for metro networks

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 Figure 8

Figure 8: Wavelength add/drop multiplexer.

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 Wavelength Crossconnects (WXCs)
 Allow optical bypassing of transit traffic
 Selectively drop and add wavelengths and also optically switch
signals from any input to any output fiber
 Built from demultiplexers (one for each input fiber), multiplexers (one
for each output fiber) and optical switches (one for each wavelength)
(Refer Figure 9)
 Also referred to as wavelength selective crossconnect (WSXC) as
incoming signal is switched to the outgoing fiber on the same
wavelength
 More flexible switching compared to WADMs
 More suitable for arbitrary mesh topology in long-haul networks
 Fewer ports and router processing capacity requirements

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 Figure 9

Figure 9: Wavelength crossconnect.

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