Fibre Optic Communication

Dr. Ruwan Udayanga Weerasuriya

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Introduction
History
Evolution of Optical communication systems
Basic Components
Transmitters, Receivers, Amplifiers, etc
Impairments
Attenuation, Dispersion, Noise, etc
Important measuring parameters
EOF, BER, Q-factor, OSNR, etc
Networks
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References
1.R. Ramaswami and K. Sivarajan, "Optical Networks: A Practical Perspective", Morgan
Kaufmann, Second Edition, 2002.
2.G. P. Agrawal, "Fiber-optic Communication Systems", 4rd Edition ed.: John Wiley &
Sons, 2011
3.G. P. Agrawal, "Nonlinear Fiber Optics", 4th Edition ed.: Acedemic Press,2007
4.B. E. A. Saleh, M. C. Teich ,"Fundamentals of Photonics" (Wiley Series in Pure and Applied
Optics)
5.Ben G. Streetman and Sanjay Kumar Banerjee, "Solid state electronic devices", 6th ed.
2006.
6.Dennis Derickson, "Fiber Optic Test and Measurement",Prentice Hall PTR, 1998
7.E. Desurvire, Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers: Principles and Applications: Wiley-
Interscience, 2002.
8.Keang-Po Ho, Phase-Modulated Optical Communication Systems, Springer, 2005
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History
Use of Optics is ancient
Smoke signals, fire beacons, mirrors, semaphore,
flags: bit rates B < 1 bit/s
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10th century BC
Telegraphy (~1830) used electricity
B ~ 10 bit/s
Long distance communication (~1000km)
1866: first transatlantic cable
Digital scheme (Morse code)
Telephony (Invented 1876)
Information transmitted in analogue form (B ~ kbit/s)
20
th
Century
Worldwide telephony developed
Coaxial cable (1940s onwards) > 3MHz bandwidths, limited by
Frequency dependent cable loss: high data rates possible (>250 Mb/s) but short (1
km) repeater spacing
carrier frequency
Microwave systems 1-26 GHz
Bandwidth limited by carrier frequency
History
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Evolution of optical communication systems
1960 Discovery of Laser
1966 Discovery of Optical waveguides (fibre)
Higher loss (~ 1000 dB/km)
1970-80 Discovery of Optical Amplifiers
1970s onward
o Optical waves give several orders of
magnitude increase in BL, due to much
higher carrier frequency
o Optical fibre : low loss (~0.2 dB/km at
1.5 mm)
o Use of semiconductor lasers as light
sources
o Bit rate increase ~ 100,000 in less than
25 yrs
o Transmission distance increase from 10
km to 10,000km
o BL product increase > 10
7
cf first
generation lightwave systems
Figure of merit for communications systems is bit rate distance product BL (bit/s-
km)
B: bit rate, L repeater spacing
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Evolution of optical communication systems
First Generation: 0.8 mm, GaAs semiconductor lasers. 45 Mb/s, 10 km repeater
spacing
Second Generation: 1.3 mm (fibre loss <1dB/km), InGaAsP lasers, single mode fibre
(avoided dispersion of multimode fibre). 1.7 Gb/s, 50 Km repeater spacing
Third generation: 1.5 mm (fibre loss 0.2 dB/km), dispersion shifted fibre, single
longitudinal mode InGaAsP lasers. 10 Gb/s, 60-70 km repeater spacing
Forth Generation: Optical amplification using erbium doped fibre amplifiers
(spacing 60-80 km), wavelength division multiplexing. 10 Gb/s/channel, up to 100
channels, 10,000km - >100,000km transmission distance
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Transmission Windows
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Band Description Wavelength Range
O band original 1260 to 1360 nm
E band extended 1360 to 1460 nm
S band short wavelengths 1460 to 1530 nm
C band
conventional ("erbium
window")
1530 to 1565 nm
L band long wavelengths 1565 to 1625 nm
U band ultralong wavelengths 1625 to 1675 nm
Evolution of optical communication systems
40 Gb/s/channel deployment delayed due to dot-com bubble in early 2000s
and subsequent market collapse
Present research 100Gb/s/channel for Ethernet and more.
Increasing emphasis on Information Spectral Density (ISD), measured in
bit/s/Hz, due to available bandwidth on optical fibre reaching its limit
Extension of erbium fibre gain bandwidth from normal C band
Raman amplifiers
Dry fibre without water absorption peak
Novel transmission formats
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