ICT 6612: Advanced Optical Communications

Syllabus (salient features):

Reference books:
Fiber Optic Communication Technology
-- Djafar K. Mynbaev & Lowell L. Scheiner

Introduction to optical communication

Optical fiber waveguides
Optical sources & detectors: LED, Laser, PIN, APD

Fiber connections: MUX, DEMUX, OADM

Optical amplifiers: SOA, EDFA etc.
Optical modulation and detection scheme
Fiber nonlinearities: SPM, XPM, FWM, SBS, SRS
Transmission link analysis
Optical multiplexing schemes: WDM, OFDM, OTDM etc.

Optical Fiber Communications:

principles and practice ( 2nd or

3rd edition)
--- John M. Senior

Optical Fiber Communications

( 3rd or 4th edition)

--- Gerd Keiser

Fiber-Optic Communication System (3rd edition)

-- Govind P. Agrawal

Electrical & Optical communication

Advantages of optical technology

Demand for Bandwidth

Bandwidth
Demand

1990

2000

2010

Typical data bandwidth requirement

Raw text = 0.0017 Mb
Word document = 0.023 Mb
Word document with picture = 0.12 Mb
20,000 x Radio-quality sound = 0.43 Mb
Low-grade desktop video = 2.6 Mb
CD-quality sound = 17 Mb
Good compressed (MPEG1) video = 38 Mb

Communications Technologies
Year

Service

Bandwidth distance product

1900

Open wire telegraph

500 Hz-km

1940

Coaxial cable

60 kHz-km

1950

Microwave

400 kHz-km

1976

Optical fibre

1993

Erbium doped fibre amplifier

700 MHz-km
1 GHz-km

1998

EDFA + DWDM

> 20 GHz-km

2001-

EDFA + DWDM

> 80 GHz-km

2001-

OTDM

Increase in Bitrate-Distance product

> 100 GHz-km

Agrawal-Fiber Optic Communications

Historical Developments
800 BC
400 BC
150 BC
1880

Use of fire signal by the Greeks

Fire relay technique to increase transmission distance
Encoded message
Invention of the photophone by Alexander Graham Bell

Historical Developments - contd.

1930
1950-55
1962
1960

Experiments with silica fibres, by Lamb (Germany)

The birth of clad optical fibre, Kapany et al (USA)
The semiconductor laser, by Natan, Holynal et al (USA)
Line of sight optical transmission using laser:
- Beam diameter: 5 m
- Temperature change will effect the laser beam

Therefore, not a viable option

1966- A paper by C K Kao and Hockham (UL) was a break
through
- Loss < 20 dB/km
- Glass fibre rather than crystal (because of high viscosity)
- Strength: 14000 kg /m2.
Contd.

Historical Developments - contd.

1970 Low attenuation fibre, by Apron and Keck (USA) from 1000
dB/km - to - 20 dB/km
- Dopent added to the silica to in/decrease fibre refractive index.

Late 1976 Japan, Graded index multi-mode fibre

- Bandwidth: 20 GHz, but only 2 GHz/km

Start of fibre deployment.

1976 800 nm Graded multimode fibre @ 2 Gbps/km.
1980s
- 1300 nm Single mode fibre @ 100 Gbps/km
- 1500 nm Single mode fibre @ 1000 Gbps/km
- Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifier

Historical Developments - contd.

1990s
- Soliton transmission (exp.): 10 Gbps over 106 km with no error
- Optical amplifiers
- Wavelength division multiplexing,
- Optical time division multiplexing (experimental) OTDM
2000 and beyond
- Optical Networking
- Dense WDM, @ 40 Gbps/channel, 10 channels
- Hybrid DWDM/OTDM
~ 50 THz transmission window
> 1000 Channels WDM
> 100 Gbps OTDM
Polarisation multiplexing

- Intelligent networks

Lightwave transmission band

Applications
Electronics and Computers
Broad Optoelectronic
Medical Application
Instrumentation
Optical Communication Systems
High Speed Long Haul Networks
(Challenges are transmission type)
Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) ?
Access Network (AN)?
Challenges are:
- Protocol
- Multi-service capability
- Cost

Lightwave Application Areas

Optical fiber

Optical interconnects
Chip to Chip (Unlikely in near future)
Board to Board (>1foot eg. CPU-Memory)
Subsystem-Subsystem (Optics used Low Speed)

Telecommunications
Long Haul (Small Market-High Performance)
LANs (Large Market Lower Performance)

High-Speed Analog (CATV-Remote Satellite)

Optical fiber

Fiber With Cladding

Developed in 1954 by
van Heel, Hopkins &
Kapany
Cladding is a glass or
plastic cover around the
core
Protects the totalreflection surface
contamination
Reduces cross-talk
from fibers in bundles

General and Optical Communication

systems

System Block Diagram

Evolution of Light wave systems

1. Generation: The development of low-loss
fibers and semiconductor lasers (GaAs) in the
1970s.
A Gallium Aresenide (GaAs) laser operates at a
wavelength
of
0.8m.
The
optical
communication systems allowed a bit rate of
45Mbit/s and repeater spacing of 10km

Example of a laser diode.

(Ref.: Infineon)

Source
Source
coding

Modulation
Analogue
Digital

Receiver
Multiplexing

1st-stage
amplifier

Modulation

Frequency
Time

External

Pre-detection
filtering

Sampler
&
detector
Demultiplexer

Internal
Equalizer

Pulse shaping
Channel coding
Encryption
etc.

2nd-stage
amplifier

Demodulator
Decoder
Decryption
Output signal

Evolution of Lightwave systems

Optical Fiber System

State of the Art optical communication system: Dense Wavelength Division

Multiplex (DWDM) in combination of optical amplifiers. The capacity of optical
communication systems doubles every 6 months. Bit rates of 10Tbit/s were
realized by 2001.
Ref.: S. Kartalopoulos, WDWM Networks, Devices and Technology

Transmission windows

Optical Fiber Attenuation and Fiber Amplifier Gain

Global Undersea Fiber systems

Global Undersea Fiber systems

Challenges Ahead

Challenges Ahead - contd.

Modulation and detection and associated high speed electronics

Multiplexer and demultiplexer
Fibre impairments:
. Loss
. Chromatic dispersion
. Polarization mode dispersion
. Optical non-linearity
. etc.

Dedicated active and passive components

Optical switches
All optical regenerators
Network protection
Instrumentation to monitor QoS

Optical amplifier
. Low noise
. High power
. Wide bandwidth
. Longer wavelength band S

Propagation of light pulses in the

presence of chromatic dispersion

Chromatic Dispersion
It causes pulse distortion, pulse "smearing"
effects
Higher bit-rates and shorter pulses are less
robust to Chromatic Dispersion
Limits "how fast and how far data can travel
10 Gbps

Chromatic dispersion distortion of pulse shape

60 Km SMF-28

40 Gbps
4 Km SMF-28

Dispersion Compensating Fibre

By joining fibres with CD of

opposite signs (polarity) and
suitable lengths an average
dispersion close to zero can be
obtained
The compensating fiber can be
several kilometers and the reel
can be inserted at any point in
the link, at the receiver or at the
transmitter

Theoretical chromatic dispersion for

fused silica fibre

Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD)

Ey
nx
Ex
Input pulse

ny
Spreaded output pulse

The optical pulse tends to broaden as it travels down the fiber.

Bit rate versus distance limitation imposed by

different types of dispersion

This is a much weaker phenomenon than chromatic dispersion and

it is of some relevance at bit rates of 10Gb/s or more

Classification based on mode of propagation

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Classification based on RI in the core

Step index
Graded index

Step-Index Fiber
Cladding typically pure silica
Core doped with germanium to increase
index
Index difference referred to as delta in units
of percent (typically 0.3-1.0%)
Tradeoff between coupling and bending
losses
Index discontinuity at core-clad boundary

Basic Step index Fiber Structure

Graded Index Fiber

Fiber Optic Communication Systems-Agarwal

Fiber Optic Communications-Palais

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Optical Transport Network

< 10000 km
< 10 Tbit/s

Global Network

Wide Area
Network

< 100 km
< 1 Tbit/s

Metropolitan/Regional
Area Optical Network

Client/Access
Networks

FTTB
Cable modem
Networks

SDH/
SONET

ISP

ATM
Gigabit
Ethernet

< 20 km
100M - 10 Gbit/s

ATM
FTTH
Cable

PSTN/IP

Mobile

Corporate/
Enterprise Clients

Decibels
Decibels are a logarithmic scale of power
Abbreviated dB

A loss of 10 decibels means only 10% of the

light gets through
A loss of 20 dB means 1% of the light gets
through
Sunglasses stop 99% of light, so they cause a loss of
20 dB

For communications, loss must be no more than

10 or 20 decibels per kilometer

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