ECE 455 1

ECE 445 – Optical Fiber Communications

Lecture 01 - Introduction
Stavros Iezekiel
Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering
University of Cyprus
iezekiel@ucy.ac.cy

• ECE 445
• Lecture 01
• Fall Semester 2016
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ECE 455
Why is this course useful to you?
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• There are many ways we can answer this question.

• Perhaps the most obvious answer is to consider the social impact of optical
communications.

• In 1966, two engineers at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in England wrote a

paper which in essence started the race to develop optical fibre for communications:

• One year later, the Philco-Ford company tried to predict the future; they were in many
ways very close to what we have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpq5ZmANp0k
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All of this is made possible by a global infrastructure of optical cables

http://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/
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The aim of this course is to study optical fibre technology and its application to optical
communication links and systems

The basic questions we will seek to answer in the first few lectures include:

1. What are the advantages of using photonics for communications?

2. What is optical fibre?

3. What is an optical communications link? (Basic architecture)

4. How does light propagate in an optical fibre?

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http://www.arthitectural.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/02-TABLE-OF-OPTICKS-SIR-ISAAC-NEWTON-1704.jpg

"Light is waves on Mondays, Wednesdays, and

Fridays; it's particles on Tuesdays, Thursdays,
and Saturdays, and on Sundays, we think about
it!"

W.H. Bragg, 1930.

WHAT IS LIGHT?
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Optics is one of the oldest branches of science.

It is concerned with the generation, propagation, manipulation and detection of light. For
many centuries, the development of optical sources and optical detectors was very slow,
hence progress was strongest in studies of light propagation and light manipulation, e.g.:

Refraction (ray optics) Interference

(wave optics)

Polarisation (electromagnetic optics)

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By the late 19th century, the theoretical work of Maxwell and the experiments of Hertz had
resulted in the electromagnetic view of light, in which it holds that light consists of
coupled time-varying electric and magnetic fields that satisfy a wave equation (which itself
can be derived from Maxwell’s equations):

c = speed of light = 2.998 × 10-8 ms-1 in vacuo

c = fλ
Solution is a travelling-wave:

2π 2π
k= ω=
λ T
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However, the development of modern physics (and especially the work of Planck and
Einstein) led to the photon view of light.

Energy of a photon: hc
E = hf =
λ

h = Planck’s constant = 6.626 × 10-34 J·s

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Light as photons: Photoelectric effect

• Increasing the intensity of the light increases the number of photoelectrons, but not their
maximum kinetic energy.

• Red light will not cause the ejection of electrons from potassium, no matter what the
intensity.

• Weak violet light will eject only a few electrons, but their maximum kinetic energies are
greater than those for intense light of longer wavelengths!

hc
Explained by Planck relationship: E = hf =
λ
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• Nowadays, most electronic communication (e.g. wireless) is in the microwave region.

• Typically there is a three orders of magnitude difference between microwaves and photonics

1 mm

1 nm
1 km

1 µm
1 cm
Wavelength (m)
104 103 102 10 1 10-1 10-2 10-3 10-4 10-5 10-6 10-7 10-8 10-9

Ultrashortwave

ultrashortwave

Sub-Mm-wave
Mediumwave

Mid-infrared
Far-infrared
Microwave
Shortwave

Ultraviolet
Mm-wave
Longwave

Extremely

Visible

X-ray
Electronic techniques Optics
THz
Microwaves Photonics
Gap

30 kHz 30 MHz 3 GHz 30 GHz 3 THz 3 PHz

Frequency
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OPTICAL COMMUNICATIONS
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The most basic optical communication link:

Optical Optical
Modulation Channel
source detector
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Optical communications has a long history, having been used by many civilizations. One
example is the friktories of ancient Greece:

This was a very early

example of digital optical
communications.

Το σύστημα με τις Φρυκτωρίες παρουσιάζεται στον ειδικό

χάρτη όπου εμφανίζει με φωτεινές ενδείξεις τους πυρσούς
να ανάβουν και να μεταδίδουν το μήνυμα από την Τροία
στις Μυκήνες....

/
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Digital optics, 1793-1852:

http://www.ec-lyon.fr/tourisme/Chappe/

• Claude Chappe’s Optical Telegraph (France)

• Based on a semaphore system
• Repeater spacing ≈ 6 miles
• Message could cover 100 miles in 30 minutes
• Bit rate < 1 bit/s
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Bell’s photophone 1880

- Analogue optical link

Transmitter Receiver

• Light modulated by vibrating mirror • Light is photodetected using selenium

(i.e. opto-mechanical) (resistance decreases with increasing light
intensity)
• First example of optoelectronic receiver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc9Mjzfowcs
© Alexander Graham Bell Foundation
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One of the problems with these early systems was the fact that there was no guided
channel between the transmitter and receiver, in other words the channel was free-space
optics.
For some applications, such as satellite-
to-satellite free space optical links, this is
not a problem.

But for terrestrial free space

optical communications,
weather conditions have to be
considered:
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Each of these factors can attenuate the signal. Sunlight

However, there are ways to mitigate each environmental factor.

Window
Attenuation
Fog

Building
motion

Scintillation Alignment
Σπινθηροβολία

Obstructions

Low Cloud
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An efficient way of guiding light is useful for modern long distance optical
communications….
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Kao and Hockham proposed the use of optical fibres for communications - 1966

More specifically, they showed that a target figure of 20 dB/km for fibre
attenuation would make optical communications viable. At this stage, losses were
way too high (1000 dB/km for glass, as opposed to tens of dB/km at most for
coaxial cable), but they showed this was mainly due to impurities.
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Work at Corning in the early 1970’s eventually led to fiber losses of 20 dB/km, and
over time these have been reduced to as low as 0.2 dB/km (at 1550 nm).

Egyptian
107

106
Venetian
105
Optical
104
Loss Optical fibre
(dB/km) 103 Optical glass

102

10
1

0.1
3000 BC 1000 AD 1900 1966 1979 1983
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Fibre offers a lot of bandwidth!

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Optical Fibres: Basic Structure

• dielectric waveguides that operate at optical wavelengths; mostly made from silica
glass, but plastic versions (for multimode) also available

• confine electromagnetic energy in the form of light within core and guide the light
parallel to the longitudinal axis:

CORE CLADDING BUFFER COATING

Not to scale!

•A circular core of refractive index n1 is surrounded by cladding with a slightly lower

value of refractive index (n2 < n1). The fibre is encapsulated by the buffer and
additional layers as appropriate.

• Light is confined to the core of the fibre by total internal reflection – TIR at the
core-cladding interface.
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Advantages of optical fibre

• Very wide bandwidth compared to metallic transmission lines, i.e. potentially

thousands of GHz
• Very low loss (as low as 0.2 dB/km)
• Can achieve low dispersion (depends on wavelength of source and fibre type)
• Small size and weight
• Electrical isolation (glass and plastic)

A fiber-optic cable (right) containing 144 tiny glass

fibers is compared with a cross section of a
conventional copper cable.
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However, even though fibre itself is small in cross-section, in some applications the overall
cable is not so small or light:

A lot of optical fibre is installed in

undersea (submarine) systems,
and must be well protected.
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The basic ingredients of a classical communications link include:

• coherent oscillator (i.e. laser)

• mixer (e.g. directly modulated laser or modulator)
• envelope detector (e.g. photodiode)

However, there are other components (analogous to electronic

components) that are also used in optical communications:

• amplifiers (Erbium-doped fibre)

• couplers, combiners and splitters
• wavelength selective components – filters, multiplexers
• isolators and circulators
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Basic architecture of an optical fibre link

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Most fibre links are digital, and consequently we worry about bit rate – distance
products and bit error rates:

© G.D. Keiser
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Figures of merit

• The designers of a long distance high-bit rate fibre link have a number of
objectives.
• One is to achieve as high a bit rate as possible.
• However, it is also important to maximise the distance between optical amplifiers
or repeaters (i.e. the repeater spacing).
• The two figures are multiplied to give a key figure of merit used to assess link
performance:

Bit-rate - repeater spacing product (bits/s - km)

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Bit rate – distance product improvements