Fiber Optics

By Vikas kaduskar

Advantages of optical fiber communication

Enormous potential bandwidth: The optical carrier frequency in the range 10^13 to10^16 Hz. coaxial cable bandwidth typically around 20 MHz over distances up to a maximum of 10 km. Small size and weight. Optical fibers have very small diameters which are often no greater than the diameter of a human hair. Hence, even when such fibers are covered with protective coatings they are far smaller and much lighter than corresponding copper cables.

Advantages of optical fiber communication

Electrical isolation. Optical fibers which are fabricated from glass, or sometimes a plastic polymer, are electrical insulators and therefore, unlike their metallic counterparts, they do not exhibit earth loop and interface problems. transmission ideally suited for communication in electrically hazardous environments as the fibers create no arcing or spark hazard at abrasions or short circuits

Advantages of optical fiber communication

Immunity to interference and crosstalk. Optical fibers form a dielectric waveguide and are therefore free from electromagnetic interference (EMI), radio-frequency interference (RFI), or switching transients giving electromagnetic pulses (EMPs). Hence the operation of an optical fiber communication system is unaffected by transmission through an electrically noisy environment and the fiber cable requires no shielding from EMI.

Advantages of optical fiber communication

Low transmission loss.:fabricated with losses as low as 0.15 dB km^1 System reliability and ease of maintenance Potential low cost

Introduction
Optical fiber waveguide showing the core of refractive index n1, surrounded by the cladding of slightly lower refractive index n2.

Ray theory transmission

Total internal reflection: The angles of incidence 1 and refraction 2 are related to each other and to the refractive indices of the dielectrics by Snells law of refraction.

 As n1 is greater than n2,the angle of refraction is always greater than the angle of incidence. Thus when the angle of refraction is 90 and the refracted ray emerges parallel to the interface between the dielectrics, the angle of incidence must be less than 90. This is the limiting case of refraction and the angle of incidence is now known as the critical angle c, as shown inFig(b).

 At angles of incidence greater than the critical angle the light is reflected back into the originating dielectric medium (total internal reflection) with high efficiency (around 99.9%).Hence, it may be observed in Fig(c) that total internal reflection occurs at the interface between two dielectrics of differing refractive indices when light is incident on the dielectric of lower index from the dielectric of higher index.

 Figure illustrates the transmission of a light ray in an optical fiber via a series of total internal reflections at the interface of the silica core and the slightly lower refractive index silica cladding. The light ray shown in Fig. is known as a meridional ray as it passes through the axis of the fiber core.

Acceptance angle

a meridional ray A at the critical angle c within the fiber atthe corecladding interface. It may be observed that this ray enters the fiber core at an angle a to the fiber axis and is refracted at the aircore interface before transmission to the corecladding interface at the critical angle. Hence, any rays which are incident into the fiber core at an angle greater than a will be transmitted to the corecladding interface at an angle less than c, and will not be totally internally reflected.

Numerical aperture

Example
A silica optical fiber with a core diameter large enough to be considered by ray theory analysis has a core refractive index of 1.50 and a cladding refractive index of 1.47. Determine: (a) the critical angle at the corecladding interface; (b) the NA for the fiber; (c) the acceptance angle in air for the fiber.

Electromagnetic mode theory for optical propagation In order to obtain an improved model for the propagation of light in an optical fiber, electromagnetic wave theory must be considered. The basis for the study of electromagnetic wave propagation is provided by Maxwells equations and the divergence conditions: The four field vectors are related by the relations:

 Substituting for D and B and taking the curl

Then using the divergence conditions of Eqs with the vector identity

we obtain the non dispersive wave equations:

 where ^2 is the Laplacian operator. For rectangular Cartesian and cylindrical polar coordinates the above wave equations hold for each component of the field vector, every component satisfying the scalar wave equation:

where may represent a component of the E or H field and p is the phase velocity

 where r and r are the relative permeability and permittivity for the dielectric medium and 0 and 0 are the permeability and permittivity of free space. The velocity of light in free space c is therefore:

The basic solution of the wave equation is a sinusoidal wave, the most important form of which is a uniform plane wave given by:

 where is the angular frequency of the field, t is the time, k is the propagation vector which gives the direction of propagation and the rate of change of phase with distance, When is the optical wavelength in a vacuum, the magnitude of the propagation vector or the vacuum phase propagation constant k (where k = |k|) is given by:

step-index fibers.
a core of constant refractive index n1 and a cladding of a slightly lower refractive index n2 is known as step index fiber. This is because the refractive index profile for this type of fiber makes a step change at the corecladding interface, as indicated in Figure, which illustrates the two major types of step index fiber. The refractive index profile may be defined as:

 The refractive index profile and ray transmission in step index fibers: (a) multimode step index fiber; (b) single-mode step index fiber

 Figure (a) shows a multimode step index fiber with a core diameter of around 50 m or greater, which is large enough to allow the propagation of many modes within the fiber core. This is illustrated in Figure (a) by the many different possible ray paths through the fiber. Figure (b) shows a single-mode or mono mode step index fiber which allows the propagation of only one transverse electromagnetic mode (typically HE11), and hence the core diameter must be of the order of 2 to 10 m. The propagation of a single mode is illustrated in Figure (b) as corresponding to a single ray path only (usually shown as the axial ray) through the fiber.

 The single-mode step index fiber has the distinct advantage of low intermodal dispersion (broadening of transmitted light pulses), as only one mode is transmitted, whereas with multimode step index fiber considerable dispersion may occur due to the differing group velocities of the propagating modes.

 However, for lower bandwidth applications multimode fibers have several advantages over single-mode fibers. These are: (a) the use of spatially incoherent optical sources (e.g. most light-emitting diodes) which cannot be efficiently coupled to single-mode fibers.(b) larger numerical apertures, as well as core diameters, facilitating easier coupling to optical sources; (c) lower tolerance requirements on fiber connectors.

Graded index fibers

Graded index fibers do not have a constant refractive index in the core* but a decreasing core index n(r) with radial distance from a maximum value of n1 at the axis to a constant value n2 beyond the core radius a in the cladding. This index variation may be represented as:

where is the relative refractive index difference and is the profile parameter which gives the characteristic refractive index profile of the fiber core

 Possible fiber refractive index profiles for different values of

 The refractive index profile and ray transmission in a multimode graded index fiber

Attenuation
optical fiber communications became especially attractive when the transmission losses of fibers were reduced below those of the competing metallic conductors (less than 5 dB km^1). 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 input (transmitted) optical power Pi into a fiber to the output (received) optical power Po from the fiber as:

 In optical fiber communications the attenuation is usually expressed in decibels per unit length (i.e. dB km^1) following

Fiber bend loss

Optical fibers suffer radiation losses at bends or curves on their paths. This is due to the energy in the evanescent field at the bend exceeding the velocity of light in the cladding and hence the guidance mechanism is inhibited, which causes light energy to be radiated from the fiber The part of the mode which is on the outside of the bend is required to travel faster than that on the inside so that a wavefront perpendicular to the direction of propagation is maintained. Hence, part of the mode in the cladding needs to travel faster than the velocity of light in that medium

 The loss can generally be represented by a radiation attenuation coefficient which has the form

 where R is the radius of curvature of the fiber bend and c1, c2 are constants which are independent of R. Furthermore, large bending losses tend to occur in multimode fibers at a critical radius of curvature Rc which may be estimated from
It may be observed from the expression given in Eq. that potential macro bending losses may be reduced by: (a) designing fibers with large relative refractive index differences; (b) operating at the shortest wavelength possible.

 Dispersion of the transmitted optical signal causes distortion for both digital and analog transmission along optical fibers. When considering the major implementation of optical fiber transmission which involves some form of digital modulation, then dispersion mechanisms within the fiber cause broadening of the transmitted light pulses as they travel along the channel. The phenomenon is illustrated in Figure , where it may be observed that each pulse broadens and overlaps with its neighbors, eventually becoming indistinguishable at the receiver input. The effect is known as

Dispersion

An illustration using the digital bit pattern 1011 of the broadening of light pulses as they are transmitted along a fiber: (a) fiber input; (b) fiber output at a distance L1; (c) fiber output at a distance L2 > L1

Schematic diagram showing a multimode step index fiber, multimode graded index fiber and single-mode step index fiber, and illustrating the pulse broadening due to intermodal dispersion in each fiber type

 Chromatic or intramodal dispersion may occur in all types of optical fiber and results from the finite spectral line width of the optical source. Since optical sources do not emit just a single frequency but a band of frequencies (in the case of the injection laser corresponding to only a fraction of a percent of the center frequency, whereas for the LED it is likely to be a significant percentage), then there may be propagation delay differences between the different spectral components of the transmitted signal. This causes broadening of each transmitted mode and hence intramodal dispersion.

 The delay differences may be caused by the dispersive properties of the waveguide material (material dispersion) and also guidance effects within the fiber structure (waveguide dispersion). Material dispersion: Pulse broadening due to material dispersion results from the different group velocities of the various spectral components launched into the fiber from the optical source. It occurs when the phase velocity of a plane wave propagating in the dielectric medium varies nonlinearly with wavelength, and a material is said to exhibit material dispersion when the second differential of the refractive index with respect to wavelength is not zero

 The pulse delay m due to material dispersion in a fiber of length L is therefore:

the rms pulse broadening due to material dispersion is given by

 However, it may be given in terms of a material dispersion parameter M which is defined as: and which is often expressed in units of ps nm1 km1.

 Both core and cladding use silica as the base material; the difference in the refractive indices is realized by doping the core, or the cladding, or both. Dopants such as GeO2 and P2O5 increase the refractive index of silica and are suitable for the core. Dopants such as B2O3 and fluorine decrease the refractive index of silica and are suitable for the cladding. The diameter of the outermost cladding layer has the standard value of 125 m for all communication grade fibers.

Fiber Manufacturing

Fabrication Methods
two stages vapor-deposition method is used to make a cylindrical preform with the desired refractiveindex profile, The preform is typically 1 m long and 2 cm in diameter and contains core and cladding layers with correct relative dimensions. In the second stage, the preform is drawn into a fiber by using a precision-feed mechanism that feeds the preform into a furnace at the proper speed.

 three commonly used methods are modified chemical-vapor deposition (MCVD), outside-vapor deposition (OVD), and vapor-axial deposition (VAD).

 successive layers of SiO2 are deposited on the inside of a fused silica tube by mixing the vapors of SiCl4 and O2 at a temperature of about 1800C. To ensure uniformity, a multi burner torch is moved back and forth across the tube length using an automatic translation stage. The refractive index of the cladding layers is controlled by adding fluorine to the tube. When a sufficient cladding thickness has been deposited, the core is formed by adding the vapors of GeCl 4 or POCl3. These vapors react with oxygen to form the dopants GeO2 and P2O5:

 The flow rate of GeCl4 or POCl3 determines the amount of dopant and the corresponding increase in the refractive index of the core. A triangularindex core can be fabricated simply by varying the flow rate from layer to layer. When all layers forming the core have been deposited, the torch temperature is raised to collapse the tube into a solid rod of preform. The MCVD process is also known as the inner-vapor-deposition method, as the core and cladding layers are deposited inside a silica tube

 The fiber drawing step is essentially the same irrespective of the process used to make the preform.

 The preform is fed into a furnace in a controlled manner where it is heated to a temperature of about 2000C. The melted preform is drawn into a fiber by using a precision-feed mechanism. The fiber diameter is monitored optically by diffracting light emitted by a laser from the fiber. A change in the diameter changes the diffraction pattern, which in turn changes the photodiode current. This urrent change acts as a signal for a servo control mechanism that adjusts the winding rate of the fiber. The fiber diameter can be kept constant to within 0.1% by this technique.

 A polymer coating is applied to the fiber during the drawing step. It serves a dual purpose, as it provides mechanical protection and preserves the transmission properties of the fiber. The diameter of the coated fiber is typically 250 m, although it can be as large as 900 m when multiple coatings are used. The tensile strength of the fiber is monitored during its winding on the drum. The winding rate is typically 0.20.5 m/s. Several hours are required to convert a single preform into a fiber of about 5 km length

 Cabling of fibers is necessary to protect them from deterioration during transportation and installation. Cable design depends on the type of application it may be enough to buffer the fiber by placing it inside a plastic jacket. For others the cable must be made mechanically strong by using strengthening elements such as steel rods. A light-duty cable is made by surrounding the fiber by a buffer jacket of hard plastic.

Cables and Connectors

 Figure shows three simple cable designs. A tight jacket can be provided by applying a buffer plastic coating of 0.51 mm thickness on top of the primary coating applied during the drawing process.

 In an alternative approach the fiber lies loosely inside a plastic tube. Microbending losses are nearly eliminated in this loose-tube construction, since the fiber can adjust itself within the tube. This construction can also be used to make multifiber cables by using a slotted tube with a Heavy-duty cables use steel or a strong polymer such as Kevlar to provide the mechanical strength. different slot for each fiber.

 Figure shows schematically three kinds of cables. In the loose-tube construction, fiberglass rods embedded in polyurethane and a Kevlar jacket provide the necessary mechanical strength (left drawing).

 The same design can be extended to multifiber cables by placing several loose-tube fibers around a central steel core (middle drawing). When a large number of fibers need to be placed inside a single cable, a ribbon cable is used (right drawing). The ribbon is manufactured by packaging typically 12 fibers between two polyester tapes. Several ribbons are then stacked into a rectangular array which is placed inside a polyethylene tube. The mechanical strength is provided by using steel rods in the two outermost polyethylene jackets. The outer diameter of such fiber cables is about 11.5 cm.

 Connectors are needed to use optical fibers in an actual communication system. They can be divided into two categories. A permanent joint between two fibers is known as a fiber splice, and a detachable connection between them is realized by using a fiber connector. Connectors are used to link fiber cable with the transmitter (or the receiver), while splices are used to join fiber segments (usually 510 km long). The main issue in the use of splices and connectors is related to the loss. Some power is always lost, as the two fiber ends are never perfectly aligned in practice. Splice losses below 0.1 dB are routinely realized by using the technique of fusion splicing. Connector losses are generally larg.er

Optical Sources
Basic Concepts: Three fundamental processes occurring between the two energy states of an atom: (a) absorption; (b) spontaneous emission; and (c) stimulated emission. Emission and Absorption Rates

Light-Emitting Diodes
A forward-biased pn junction emits light through spontaneous emission, a phenomenon referred to as electroluminescence. In its simplest form, an LED is a forward biased pn homojunction. Radiative recombination of electronhole pairs in the depletion region generates light; some of it escapes from the device and can be coupled into an optical fiber. The emitted light is incoherent with a relatively wide spectral width (3060 nm) and a relatively large angular spread.

 in the steady state the total number of carrier recombinations per second or the Recombination rate rt will be = rr + rnr. where rr is the radiative recombination rate per unit volume and rnr is the nonradiative recombination rate per unit volume. the total number of recombinations per second Rt becomes:

LED internal quantum efficiency int

 Since Rr is also equivalent to the total number of photons generated per second, then the optical power generated internally by the LED, Pint, is:

internally generated power in terms of Wavelength rather than frequency gives:

The double-heterojunction LED

The principle of operation of the DH LED is illustrated in Fig. The device shown consists of a p-type GaAs layer sandwiched between a p-type AlGaAs and an ntype AlGaAs layer. When a forward bias is applied (as indicated in Figure (a)) electrons from the n-type layer are injected through the pn junction into the p-type GaAs layer where they become minority carriers. These minority carriers diffuse away from the junction , recombining with majority carriers (holes) as they do so. Photons are therefore produced with energy corresponding to the bandgap energy of the p-type GaAs layer. The injected electrons are inhibited from diffusing into the p-type AlGaAs layer because of the potential barrier presented by the pp heterojunction.

LED structures
six major types of LED structure : Planar LED Dome LED Surface emitter LEDs Edge emitter LEDs Superluminescent LEDs Resonant cavity and quantum-dot LED

 Optical output power

LED characteristics

(a) an A1GaAs surface emitter with a 50 m diameter dot contact; (b) an AlGaAs edge emitter with a 65 m wide stripe and 100 m length

LED output spectra: (a) output spectrum for an AlGaAs surface emitter with doped active region ; (b) output spectra for an InGaAsP surface emitter showing both the lightly doped and heavily doped cases

Output spectrum

 Modulation bandwidth

The frequency response for an optical fiber system showing the electrical and optical bandwidths

pn photodiode

 Photons may be absorbed in both the depletion and diffusion regions, as indicated by the absorption region in Fig. The absorption regions position and width depend upon the energy of the incident photons and on the material from which the photodiode is fabricated. Thus in the case of the weak absorption of photons, the absorption region may extend completely throughout the device. Electronhole pairs are therefore generated in both the depletion and diffusion regions. In the depletion region the carrier pairs separate and drift under the influence of the electric field, whereas outside this region the hole diffuses towards the depletion region in order to be collected. The diffusion process is very slow compared with drift and thus limits the response of the photodiode

The pin photodiode

In order to allow operation at longer wavelengths where the light penetrates more deeply into the semiconductor material, a wider depletion region is necessary. To achieve this the n-type material is doped so lightly that it can be considered intrinsic, and to make a low resistance contact a highly doped n-type (n+) layer is added. This creates a pin (or PIN) structure, as may be seen in Figure where all the absorption takes place in the depletion region.

The pin photodiode showing the combined absorption and depletion region

Avalanche photodiodes
a) Avalanche photodiode showing high electric field (gain) region. (b) Carrier pair multiplication in the gain region of an avalanche photodiode

 The second major type of optical communications detector is the avalanche photodiode (APD). This has a more sophisticated structure than the pin photodiode in order to createan extremely high electric field region (approximately 3 105 V cm1), as may be seen in Fig(a). Therefore, as well as the depletion region where most of the photons are absorbed and the primary carrier pairs generated, there is a high-field region in which holes and electrons can acquire sufficient energy to excite new electronhole pairs. This process is known as impact ionization and is the phenomenon that leads to avalanche breakdown in ordinary reverse-biased diodes.

Phototransistors
The structure of an npn InGaAsP/InP heterojunction phototransistor is shown in Fig(b) . The three-layer heterostructure an InP substrate using liquid-phase epitaxy (LPE). It consists of an n-type InP collector layer followed by a thin (0.1 m) p-type InGaAsP base layer. The third layer is a widebandgap n-type InP emitter layer. Radiation incident on the device passes unattenuated through the widebandgap emitter and is absorbed in the base, base collector depletion region and the collector. A large secondary photocurrent between the emitter and collector is obtained as the photogenerated holes are swept into the base, increasing the forward bias on the device. The use of the heterostructure permits low emitterbase and collectorbase junction capacitances together with low base resistance. This is achieved through low emitter and collector doping levels coupled with heavy doping of the base.

(a) Symbolic representation of the npn phototransistor showing the external connections. (b) Cross-section of an npn InGaAsP/InP heterojunction phototransistor.

Digital Transmission system

Point to pint link: examining the components that meet requirement & how these components are relate to system performance. Power budget analysis to determine whether optical link meets attenuation requirements System ride time analysis to overall system performance requiremts are met.

Point to point links

Simplest transmission system- transmitter at one end & receiver at one end.

Key system requirements needed in analyzing link 1. desired or possible transmission system. 2.Data rate or channel bandwidth 3. Bit error rate.

Fulfill designer requirements

Multimode or single mode fiber Core size, core r.i. profile, bandwidthor dispersion.

Led or laser diode source

Pinor avalanche photodiode

Emiision wavelength, spectral line width, output power,effective radiating area, emission pattern. Responsivity, optical power, wavelength

 Two analyses carried out system performance.

Link power budget: power System rise time analysis. margin between optical transmitter output & minimum receiver sensitivity needed to establish a specified BER

System considerations:
First we decide at which wavelength we transmit If distance not too far the we decide 800-900 nm, if transmission distance is too large then choose 1300-1550 nm taking advantage of low dispersion & attenuation. First choose photo detector-then- source- fiber depend on distance- repeater is needed into line to boost power level.

 Choosing photo detector: min optical power fall on photo detector to meet nit rate requirement of data rate.pin diode-less costly, more stable with increase in temperature.-bias volt 50 than 100 volts of avalanche photodiode. Parameters involved in deciding between use of laser & LED diode depend on signal dispersion, data rate, transmission distance. LED-data rate distance product is around 150 Mb/s.km for lase 2500 MB/s.Km for 800-900 nm region, for 1.3 micromtr-laser-25(Gb/s).Km & LED -1500 (Mb/S).km achieved.

 Laser diodes couples 10 to 15 db optical inti fiber than LED. Laser- lower dispersion capability, transmitter circuitry more complex. OFC-single/ multimode ( Step / Graded index) choice depends on types of optical source & amount of dispersion that can be tolerated. LED used with multimode fibers, edge emitting diode used with single mode fibers at data rate of 560Mb/s over several KM. Single/ multimode can be used with laser(30 Gb/s.km) but more complex due to less diameter while splicing.

Link Power budget:

Optical power loss model for a point to point link.

 Optical power received at photodetector depends on amount of light coupled in to fiber & losses occurred in fiber & at connectors & splices. link power budget is derived from the sequential loss contribution of each element in link. Link power budget simply consider the optical power loss PT is allowed between light source & photodetector. Ps is optical power emerging from the end of fiber flylead attached to light source & Pr is receiver sensitivity then PT = Ps-PR= 2lc+f.L+ system margin