CH-II

Transmission Characteristic of Optical Fiber

2.1 Attenuation, absorption, linear and nonlinear scattering losses, bending losses,
modal dispersion, waveguide dispersion, dispersion and pulse broadening, dispersion
shifted and dispersion flattened fibers, and non linear effects

2.2 Measurements of attenuation, dispersion and OTDR

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 Introduction

Most optical fibers are used for transmitting information over long distances.
• The transmission characteristics of most interest:
“attenuation (loss) and bandwidth”
• Now, silica-based glass fibers have losses about 0.2 dB/km (i.e. 95% launched power remains after
1 km of fiber transmission). This is essentially the fundamental lower limit for attenuation in silica-
based glass fibers.
Attenuation causes mainly by absorption and scattering.
• Fiber bandwidth is limited by the signal dispersion within the fiber. Bandwidth determines the
number of bits of information transmitted in a given time period. Now, fiber bandwidth has reached
many 10’s Gbit/s over many km’s per wavelength channel.
Bandwidth is limited by an effect called dispersion.

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 Attenuation

• There are a number of major causes of attenuation in fiber

1) Attenuation mainly due to material absorption ( Intrinsic & Extrinsic Absorption ), scattering
losses ( Linear & Non linear scattering )
2) Others include bending losses, mode coupling losses and losses due to leaky modes
3) There are also losses at connectors and splices.
• Effect of Attenuation
A receiver in an optical system requires a minimum optical input power to operate with a specific
error probability. Attenuation reduces the optical power available, degrading the error probability.
Most system specifications allow a maximum error probability of 1X10 -9

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 Attenuation Continue..

• Signal attenuation within optical fibers is usually expressed in the logarithmic unit of the decibel.
The decibel, which is used for comparing two power levels, may be defined for a particular optical
wavelength as the ratio of the output optical power Po from the fiber to the input optical power Pi.
Loss (dB) = - 10 log10 (Po/Pi) = 10 log10 (Pi/Po)
(Po<= Pi)
• The logarithmic unit has the advantage that the operations of multiplication (and division) reduce
to addition (and subtraction).
• In numerical values: Po/Pi = 10[-Loss(dB)/10]
• The attenuation is usually expressed in decibels per unit length (i.e. dB/km):

• αdBL = - 10 log10 (Po/Pi) αdB= signal attenuation per unit length in decibels
L= Fiber length

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 Types of Attenuation
Attenuation involves Material losses, Scattering losses & Bending losses.
1- Material Absorption losses
a) Intrinsic Absorption
b) Extrinsic Absorption
2- Scattering loss
a) Linear Scattering loss
i) Rayleigh Scattering loss ii) Mie Scattering loss
b) Nonlinear Scattering loss
i) Stimulated Brillouin Scattering loss ii) Stimulated Raman Scattering loss
3- Bending loss.

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 Material Absorption Losses
Material absorption is a loss mechanism related to the material composition and the fabrication
process for the fiber, which results in the dissipation of some of the transmitted optical power as
heat in the waveguide.
The absorption of the light may be intrinsic or extrinsic.

Intrinsic absorption is caused by the interaction with one or more of the major component of the
glass. Intrinsic absorption is a natural property of glass. It is strong in the ultraviolet (UV) region
and in infrared (IR) region of the electromagnetic spectrum. However both these considered
insignificant since optical communication systems are normally operated outside this region

Extrinsic absorption is caused by impurities within the glass (OH ions).

It is caused by dissolved water in the glass, as the Hydroxyl or (OH) ion. These hydroxyl groups
are bonded into the glass structure and have fundamental stretching vibrations which occur at
wavelength between 2700 nm & 4200nm depending on group position in glass network.
Typically a 1 part per million impurity level causes 1 dB/ km of attenuation at 950 nm.

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 Intrinsic absorption

• Pure silica-based glass has two major intrinsic absorption mechanisms at optical wavelengths:
(1) a fundamental UV absorption edge, the peaks are centered in the ultraviolet wavelength region.
This is due to the electron transitions within the glass molecules. The tail of this peak may extend
into the the shorter wavelengths of the fiber transmission spectral window.
(2)A fundamental infrared and far-infrared absorption edge, due to molecular vibrations (such as
Si-O). The tail of these absorption peaks may extend into the longer wavelengths of the fiber
transmission spectral window.

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Fundamental fiber attenuation characteristics

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 Extrinsic absorption

• Major extrinsic loss mechanism is caused by absorption due to water (as the hydroxyl or OH-
ions) introduced in the glass fiber during fiber pulling by means of oxyhydrogen flame.
• These OH- ions are bonded into the glass structure and have absorption peaks (due to molecular
vibrations) at 1.38 mm.
• Since these OH- absorption peaks are sharply peaked, narrow spectral windows exist around 1.3
mm and 1.55 mm which are essentially unaffected by OH- absorption.
• The lowest attenuation for typical silica-based fibers occur at wavelength 1.55 mm at about 0.2
dB/km, approaching the minimum possible attenuation at this wavelength.

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1400 nm OH- absorption peak and spectral windows

OH- absorption (1400 nm)

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 Linear Scattering Losses

• Scattering - Linear Scattering Losses

Scattering is a process whereby all or some of the optical power in a mode is transferred into
another mode linearly ( proportionally to the mode power ). Frequently causes attenuation, since
the transfer is often to a mode that does not propagate well. (also called a leaky or radiation mode).
o Two major type:
1. Rayleigh scattering
2. Mie scattering

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 Rayleigh scattering
• It is the most common form of scattering
• It is caused by microscopic non-uniformities ( in homogeneities ) making light rays
partially scatter. These non-uniformities manifest themselves as refractive index
fluctuations and arise from density and compositional variations which are frozen into the
glass lattice on cooling. Nearly 90% of total attenuation is attributed to Rayleigh
Scattering.
• This becomes important when wavelengths are short comparable to size of the structures
in the glass: long wavelengths are less affected than short wavelengths
• Rayleigh scattering causes the sky to be blue, since only the short (blue) wavelengths are
significantly scattered by the air molecules.)

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 8 8 2 3
R  4 n p  c KTF
3
R  Rayleigh Scattering coeff .
  optical wavelength
n  refractive Index of medium
p  average photoelast ic coeff .
 c  Isothermal compressib ility at fitcive temp.TF
K  Boltzmanns const .
  exp  R L 
  tranmissio n loss factor
L  length of fiber

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 Mie Scattering

▪ It occurs at in homogeneities which are comparable in size to the guided wavelength.

▪ These result from the non-perfect cylindrical structure of the waveguide and may be
caused by fiber imperfections such as irregularities in the core-cladding interface, core-
cladding refractive index differences along the fiber length, diameter fluctuations, strains
and bubbles.
▪ When the scattering inhomogeneity size is greater than λ/10,the scattered intensity will be
very large.
▪ The in homogeneities may be reduced by:
1) removing imperfections due to the glass manufacturing process.
2) carefully controlled extrusion and coating of the fiber.
3) increasing the fiber guidance by increasing the relative refractive index difference.

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 Nonlinear Scattering Losses

 Non linear scattering causes the power from one mode to be transferred in either the forward or
backward direction to the same or other modes, at the different frequency.
 It depends critically upon the optical power density within the fiber and becomes significant
above threshold power levels.

 The most important types are;

1. Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS)
2. Stimulated Raman scattering ( SRS)

 Both are usually only observed at high optical power density in long single mode fibers

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 Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS)

• SBS may be regarded as the modulation of light through thermal molecular vibrations within the
fiber. The scattered light appears as upper & lower sidebands which are separated from the incident
light by the modulation frequency.
• The incident photon in this scattering process produces a phonon ( a quantum of an elastic wave in
a crystal lattice) of acoustic frequency & scattered photon which produces frequency shift.
• The frequency shift is a maximum in the backward direction reducing to zero in the forward
direction making SBS a mainly backward process.
• another way to increase SBS threshold is to phase dither the output of the external modulator - see
Graphs below. A high frequency (usually 2 x highest frequency) is imposed at the external
modulator.
• Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers (EDFAs) reduces the SBS threshold (in Watts) by the number of
amplifiers.

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The following expression allows the determination of the threshold optical power which must be
launched into a single mode optical fiber before SBS occurs.

PB  4.4 x10 3 d 2 2 dB v watts

PB  threshold power

d  fiber core diameter

  operating wavelength

v  source BW inGHz

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 Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS)

• SRS is similar to SBS except that a high frequency optical phonon rather than an acoustic
phonon is generated in the scattering process.
• It can occur in forward and backward directions in optical fiber, having optical power
threshold of up to three orders of magnitude higher than the SBS threshold in a particular
fiber.
• SBS & SRS are not observed in multimode fibers due to large core diameters which make
threshold optical power extremely high.

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 Threshold optical power for SRS

PR  5.9 x10 d  dB
2 2
watts
PR  threshold power forSRS

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 Fiber Bend Loss
• Attenuation Due to Microbending and Macrobending
• Micro bending - result of microscopic imperfections in the geometry of the fiber
• Macro bending - fiber bending with diameters on the order of centimeters (usually unnoticeable if
the radius of the bend is larger than 10 cm)

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 Fiber Bend Loss Continue..

• Macro bending Loss: The curvature of the bend is much larger than fiber diameter. Light wave
suffers sever loss due to radiation of the evanescent field in the cladding region. As the radius of
the curvature decreases, the loss increases exponentially until it reaches at a certain critical radius.
For any radius a bit smaller than this point, the losses suddenly becomes extremely large. Higher
order modes radiate away faster than lower order modes.
• Micro bending Loss: microscopic bends of the fiber axis that can arise when the fibers are
incorporated into cables. The power is dissipated through the micro bended fiber, because of the
repetitive coupling of energy between guided modes & the leaky or radiation modes in the fiber.

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  r  c1 exp c2 R 
 r  radiation attn. coeff .
c1 , c2  con tan ts
R  radius curvature
• The large Bending losses tend to occur in multimode fibers which may
be estimated by
3n12 
Rc 
4 n1  n2 
2 2 3/ 2

Rc  critical radius of curvature

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 Critical Radius of curvature for SMF
3
20   
Rcs  
 2.748  0.996  

n1  n2 3 / 2  c 

c  cutoff wavelength for SMF

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 Impairments
• The transmission of light through an optical fiber is subjected to optical effects, known as
impairments.
• There are:
• linear impairments, and
• non-linear impairments.
Linear impairments
• These impairments are called linear because their effect is proportional to the length of the fiber.
• Attenuation:
• Attenuation is the decrease of the optical power along the length of the fiber.
• Dispersion
• Dispersion is the distortion of the shape of a pulse.

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 Non-linear impairments

• They are due to the dependency of the refractive index on the intensity of the applied electrical
field. The most important nonlinear effects in this Category are self phase modulation and four
wave mixing.
• Another category of non-linear impairments includes the stimulated Raman scattering and
stimulated Brillouin scattering.

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 Dispersion
• Dispersion, expressed in terms of the symbol Δt, is defined as pulse spreading in an optical fiber.
As a pulse of light propagates through a fiber, elements such as numerical aperture, core diameter,
refractive index profile, wavelength, and laser line width cause the pulse to broaden. This poses a
limitation on the overall bandwidth of the fibre.
OR
• Different modes take a different amount of time to arrive at the receiver. Result is a spread-out
signal which limits bandwidth.
Most important types are:
1)Intramodal or chromatic dispersion
a) material dispersion
b) waveguide dispersion
c) Profile Dispersion
2) Intermodal/multimode dispersion
3) polarization mode dispersion (PMD)

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 Intramodal or Chromatic Dispersion

 Chromatic Dispersion
 It is due to the fact that the refractive index of silica is frequency dependent . In view of this,
different frequencies travel at different speeds, and as a result they experience different
delays.
 These delays cause spreading in the duration of the output pulse.
 It is the result of material dispersion, waveguide dispersion or profile dispersion
 For a light-source with a narrow spectral emission, the bandwidth of the fiber will be very
large.

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 Material Dispersion, DM

• Material Dispersion - caused by the fact that different wavelengths travel at different speeds
through a fiber, even in the same mode.
• Amount of Material Dispersion Determined by:
• range of light wavelengths injected into the fiber (spectral width of source)
• LEDs (35 - 170 nm)
• Lasers (< 5 nm)
• center operating wavelength of the source
• around 850 nm: longer wavelengths (red) travel faster than shorter wavelengths (blue)
• around 1550 nm: the situation is reversed - zero dispersion occurs where the wavelengths
travel the same speed, around 1310 nm
• Material dispersion greatly affects single-mode fibers. In multimode fibers, multimode dispersion
usually dominates

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 d 1  dn 
g    n1   1   Group delay
d c  d 

L dn1 
m   1
n     Pulse delay
c d 
d m
m  
d
m
= rms pulse broadening due to material dispersion
1 d m  d 2 n1
M  
L d c d2

M= Material dispersion parameter

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 Waveguide (DW) and Profile Dispersion

• Waveguide Dispersion, DW
• occurs because optical energy travels in both the core and cladding at slightly different speeds.
• A greater concern for single-mode fibers than for multimode fibers
• Profile Dispersion
• the refractive indices of the core and cladding are described by a refractive index profile
• since the refractive index of a graded index fiber varies, it causes a variation in the
propagation of different wavelengths
• profile dispersion is more significant in multimode fibers that in single-mode fibers

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 Total chromatic dispersion, D

• The total chromatic dispersion can be obtained by adding D M and DW i.e. (DM+DW)∆λ.

• Normally DM > DW in the range of wavelengths 800 – 900nm.

• Therefore, waveguide dispersion can be neglected except for systems operating in the region
1200nm – 1600nm

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 Intermodal or Multimode Dispersion
• Multimode Dispersion (also Modal Dispersion)
• In multi-mode fibers some modes travel a longer distance to get to the end of the fiber than others
• In view of this, the modes have different delays, which causes a spreading of the output pulse
• caused by different modes traveling at different speeds
• characteristic of multimode fiber only
It can be minimized by:
• using a smaller core diameter
• using graded-index fiber
• use single-mode fiber - single-mode fiber is only single-mode at wavelengths greater than
the cutoff wavelength
• When multimode dispersion is present, it usually dominates to the point that other types of
dispersion can be ignored. 2
L( NA)
Ts 
2Cn1
• Intermodal dispersion formula, L=fiber length, C= speed of light, n 1=core refractive index

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 Ln1 LNA
2
s  
2 3c 4 3n1c

•  s =rms pulse broadening at the fiber out put due to intermodal dispersion for the multimode
step index fiber ( standard deviation)

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 Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD)
• Complex optical effect that occurs in single-mode fibers.
• Most single-mode fibers support two perpendicular polarizations of the original transmitted signal.
• It is due to the fact that the core of the fiber is not perfectly round.
• In an ideal circularly symmetric fiber the light gets polarized and it travels along two polarization
planes which have the same speed.
• When the core of the fiber is not round, the light traveling along the two planes may travel at
different speeds.
• This difference in speed will cause the pulse to break.
• Because of imperfections, the two polarizations do not travel at the same speed.
• The difference in arrival times is known as PMD (ps/km 1/2)

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 Optimum single mode fiber & distortion/attenuation characteristics

Fact 1) Minimum distortion at wavelength about 1300 nm for single mode silica fiber.
Fact 2) Minimum attenuation is at 1550 nm for single mode silica fiber.
Strategy: shifting the zero-dispersion to longer wavelength for minimum attenuation and
dispersion by Modifying waveguide dispersion by changing from a simple step-index
core profile to more complicated profiles. There are four major categories to do that:
1- 1300 nm optimized single mode step-fibers: matched cladding (mode diameter 9.6
micrometer) and depressed-cladding (mode diameter about 9 micrometer)
2- Dispersion shifted fibers.
3- Dispersion-flattened fibers.
4- Large-effective area (LEA) fibers (less nonlinearities for fiber optical amplifier
applications, effective cross section areas are typically greater than 100 m 2).

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Single mode fiber dispersion

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Optical fiber measuring instruments

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 Optical Time-Domain Reflectometer
• Connected at one end only
• Transmits an optical pulse at one end and measures the backscattered optical power
• The backscattering occurs at the discontinuities like splices, connectors, fiber breaks
• The time delay of the reflection is measure of their location

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Schematic illustration of the main parts of an OTDR

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Simplified graph from an OTDR

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OTDR curve and how it is used for distance measurement

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OTDR curve and its use in attenuation measurement

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Two – point method

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 Measurement of Intermodal Dispersion

The most common method for measuring multimode fiber bandwidth is based on measurement of
the impulse response.
A pulsed laser source is coupled through a mode scrambler to the input of the test fiber.
The source spectrum must be narrow enough that the results are not significantly influenced by
chromatic dispersion.
Multimode fiber bandwidth measurements are sensitive to optical launch conditions and the
deployment of the test sample.
For stable repeatable measurement, a mode-scramble device should be inserted ahead of the test
device to assure excitation of a large number of modes. In addition cladding light should be
removed.

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 Measurement of Chromatic Dispersion

Chromatic Dispersion is simply a variation in the speed of propagation of a light wave signal with
wavelength.
The optical source in a high-speed communication system is typically a single line diode laser with
nonzero spectral width. Pulse modulation increases the spectral width. Each wavelength component
of the signal travels at a slightly different speed, resulting in the pulse broadening.
In single mode fiber, chromatic dispersion results from the interplay of two underlying effects.
Material dispersion results from the nonlinear dependence upon wavelength of the refractive index,
and the corresponding group velocity, of doped silica.
Waveguide dispersion is rooted in the wavelength dependent relationships of the group velocity to
the core diameter and the difference in index between the core and the cladding.
Control of total chromatic dispersion of transmission paths is critical to the design and construction
of long haul, high speed telecommunications system. The first objective is to reduce the total
dispersion to the point where its contribution to the error rate of the system is acceptable.
The dispersion of a single channel system can be controlled by concatenating fibers of differing
dispersion such that the total dispersion is near zero.

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