Fiber Optics

Fiber Optics
Compiled By: IMRAN MIR
(COURSE MATERIAL FOR DEPARTMENTAL PROMOTION EXAMS)
FIBER OPTICS
CHAPTER 1
FIBER OPTICS
HISTORY OF FIBER OPTICS
John Tyndall
In 1870, John Tyndall, using a jet of water that flowed from one container to another and a beam of light, demonstrated that light used internal reflection to follow a specific path. As water poured out through the spout of the first container, Tyndall directed a beam of sunlight at the path of the water. The light, as seen by the audience, followed a zigzag path inside the curved path of the water. This simple experiment marked the first research into the guided transmission of light. William Wheeling, in 1880, patented a method of light transfer called piping light. Wheeling believed that by using mirrored pipes branching off from a single source of illumination, i.e. a bright electric arc, he could send the light to many different rooms in the same way that water, through plumbing, is carried throughout buildings today. Due to the ineffectiveness of Wheelings idea and to the concurrent introduction of Edisons highly successful incandescent light bulb, the concept of piping light never took off.
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Alexander Graham Bell That same year, Alexander Graham Bell developed an optical voice transmission system he called the photophone. The photophone used free-space light to carry the human voice 656 ft (200 m). Specially placed mirrors reflected sunlight onto a diaphragm attached within the mouthpiece of the photophone. At the other end, mounted within a parabolic reflector, was a light-sensitive selenium resistor. This resistor was connected to a battery that was, in turn, wired to a telephone receiver. As one spoke into the photophone, the illuminated diaphragm vibrated, casting various intensities of light onto the selenium resistor. The changing intensity of light altered the current that passed through the telephone receiver which then converted the light back into speech. Bell believed this invention was superior to the telephone because it did not need wires to connect the transmitter and receiver. Today, free-space optical links find extensive use in metropolitan applications. The rest, as they say, is history. 1900: Max Planck introduced a new field of science; quantum physics. He
mathematically demonstrated that matter radiates energy in discrete bundles which he named quanta.
FIBER OPTICS 1905: Albert Einstein built on the research of Max Planck to show that light is made of packets, later referred to as photons. Einstein received a Nobel prize in 1921 for this breakthrough. 1920's: John Logie Baird in England and Clarence W. Hansell in the United States patented the concept of using hollow pipes to transmit images for television and facsimile systems. 1930's: Heinrich Lamm, a medical student in Munich Germany, reported the
transmission of an image of a light bulb through a short bundle of uncladded fibers. 1960's: fragile. Charles Kao and George Hodkham at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories in England, in their landmark theoretical paper, postulated that the light loss in fiber could be dramatically reduced by using amplifiers at intervals to boost the signals. 1970's: Scientists from Corning Glass Work prepared the first batch of optical fiber Theodore Maiman invented the ruby laser. This first laser was bulky and
hundreds of yards long and were able to communicate over it with crystal clear clarity. Simultaneously a group at Bell Labs developed a semiconductor laser that could operate at room temperature. Early 1980's: Fibers were produced that were so transparent that a signal could pass through 150 miles of fiber before becoming too weak to detect. The breakthrough came through the realization that pure silica glass fiber, devoid of all of metal impurities, could only be prepared directly from vapor components. Small optical fiber networks were being installed. In early fiber optic systems, amplifiers were used to regenerate weak signals. Optical devices were used to detect incoming signals. and electronic circuitry converted and amplified the electrical current, then driving a new laser to recreate the optical signal. 1985: S. B. Poole of England's University of Southampton discovered that by splicing a short strand of erbium-doped glass into the main fiber, the system would receive energy from an eternal source and act as a laser it its own right. By amplifying a weak optical 5
FIBER OPTICS signal with out electronic circuitry. This dramatically increased the carrying capacity (100 times) over systems utilizing electronic amplifiers. 1988: First transatlantic fiber cable is laid with glass so transparent that amplifiers are only needed about every 40 miles. 1991: Emmanuel Desurvire of Bell Labs and David Payne and P.J. Meers of England's University of Southampton, produce cable with transmitters built in to the fibers. 1996: Fiber optic cable laid across the Pacific Ocean.
1.1 JOHN TYNDALL EXPERIMENT In 1870, John Tyndall, using a jet of water that flowed from one container to another and a beam of light, demonstrated that light used internal reflection to follow a specific path. As water poured out through the spout of the first container, Tyndall directed a beam of sunlight at the path of the water. The light, as seen by the audience, followed a zigzag path inside the curved path of the water. This simple experiment, illustrated in Figure 1, marked the first research into the guided transmission of light.
Figure 1.1
FIBER OPTICS
William Wheeling, in 1880, patented a method of light transfer called piping light. Wheeling believed that by using mirrored pipes branching off from a single source of illumination, i.e. a bright electric arc, he could send the light to many different rooms in the same way that water, through plumbing, is carried throughout buildings today. Due to the ineffectiveness of Wheelings idea and to the concurrent introduction of Edisons highly successful incandescent light bulb, the concept of piping light never took off. That same year, Alexander Graham Bell developed an optical voice transmission system he called the photophone. The photophone used free-space light to carry the human voice 200 meters. Specially placed mirrors reflected sunlight onto a diaphragm attached within the mouthpiece of the photophone. At the other end, mounted within a parabolic reflector, was a light-sensitive selenium resistor. This resistor was connected to a battery that was, in turn, wired to a telephone receiver. As one spoke into the photophone, the illuminated diaphragm vibrated, casting various intensities of light onto the selenium resistor. The changing intensity of light altered the current that passed through the telephone receiver which then converted the light back into speech. Bell believed this invention was superior to the telephone because it did not need wires to connect the transmitter and receiver. Today, free space optical links find extensive use in metropolitan applications.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Fiber optic technology experienced a phenomenal rate of progress in the second half of the twentieth century. Early success came during the 1950s with the development of the fiberscope. This image-
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Figure 1.2 Optical Fiber with Cladding
transmitting device, which used the first practical all-glass fiber, was concurrently devised by Brian OBrien at the American Optical Company and Narinder Kapany (who first coined the term fiber optics in 1956) and colleagues at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. Early all-glass fibers experienced excessive optical loss, the loss of the light signal as it traveled the fiber, limiting transmission distances. This motivated scientists to develop glass fibers that included a separate glass coating. The innermost region of the fiber, or core, was used to transmit the light, while the glass coating, or cladding, prevented the light from leaking out of the core by reflecting the light within the boundaries of the core. This concept is explained by Snells Law which states that the angle at which light is reflected is dependent on the refractive indices of the two materials in this case, the core and the cladding. The lower refractive index of the cladding (with respect to the core) causes the light to be angled back into the core as illustrated in Figure 1.2.
FIBER OPTICS
The fiberscope quickly found application inspecting welds inside reactor vessels and combustion chambers of jet aircraft engines as well as in the medical field. Fiberscope technology has evolved over the years to make laparoscopic surgery one of the great medical advances of the twentieth century. The development of laser technology was the next important step in the establishment of the industry of fiber optics. Only the laser diode (LD) or its lower-power cousin, the light-emitting diode (LED), had the potential to generate large amounts of light in a spot tiny enough to be useful for fiber optics. In 1957, Gordon Gould popularized the idea of using lasers when, as a graduate student at Columbia University, he described the laser as an intense light source. Shortly after, Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow at Bell Laboratories supported the laser in scientific circles. Lasers went through several generations including the development of the ruby laser and the helium-neon laser in 1960. Semiconductor lasers were first realized in 1962; these lasers are the type most widely used in fiber optics today. Because of their higher modulation frequency capability, the importance of lasers as a means of carrying information did not go unnoticed by communications engineers. Light has an information-carrying capacity 10,000 times that of the highest radio frequencies being used. However, the laser is unsuited for open-air transmission because it is adversely affected by environmental conditions such as rain, snow, hail, and smog. Faced with the challenge of finding a transmission medium other than air, Charles Kao and Charles Hockham, working at the Standard Telecommunication Laboratory in England in 1966, published a landmark paper proposing that optical fiber might be a suitable transmission medium if its attenuation could be kept under 20 decibels per kilometer (dB/km). At the time of this proposal, optical fibers exhibited losses of 1,000 dB/ km or more. At a loss of only 20 dB/km, 99% of the light would be lost over only 3,300 feet. In other words, only 1/100th of the optical power that was transmitted
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reached the receiver. Intuitively, researchers postulated that the current, higher optical losses were the result of impurities in the glass and not the glass itself. An optical loss of 20 dB/km was within the capability of the electronics and opto-electronic components of the day. Intrigued by Kao and Hockhams proposal, glass researchers began to work on the problem of purifying glass. In 1970, Drs. Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz of Corning succeeded in developing a glass fiber that exhibited attenuation at less than 20 dB/km, the threshold for making fiber optics a viable technology. It was the purest glass ever made. The early work on fiber optic light source and detector was slow and often had to borrow technology developed for other reasons. For example, the first fiber optic light sources were derived from visible indicator LEDs. As demand grew, light sources were developed for fiber optics that offered higher switching speed, more appropriate wavelengths, and higher output power. For more information on light emitters see Laser Diodes and LEDs. Fiber optics developed over the years in a series of generations that can be closely tied to wavelength. Figure 1.3 shows three Figure 1.3 - Four Wavelength Regions of curves. The top, dashed, curve Optical Fiber corresponds to early 1980s fiber, the middle, dotted, curve corresponds to late 1980s fiber, and the bottom, solid, curve corresponds to modern optical fiber. The earliest fiber optic systems were developed at an operating wavelength of about 850 nm. This wavelength corresponds to the socalled first window in a silica-based optical fiber. This window refers to a wavelength region that offers low optical loss. It sits between several large absorption peaks
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caused primarily by moisture in the fiber and Rayleigh scattering. The 850 nm region was initially attractive because the technology for light emitters at this wavelength had already been perfected in visible indicator LEDs. Low-cost silicon detectors could also be used at the 850 nm wavelength. As technology progressed, the first window became less attractive because of its relatively high 3 dB/km loss limit. Most companies jumped to the second window at 1310 nm with lower attenuation of about 0.5 dB/km. In late 1977, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) developed the third window at 1550 nm. It offered the theoretical minimum optical loss for silicabased fibers, about 0.2 dB/km. Today, 850 nm, 1310 nm, and 1550 nm systems are all manufactured and deployed along with very low-end, short distance, systems using visible wavelengths near 660 nm. Each wavelength has its advantage. Longer wavelengths offer higher performance, but always come with higher cost. The shortest link lengths can be handled with wavelengths of 660 nm or 850 nm. The longest link lengths require 1550 nm wavelength systems. A fourth window, near 1625 nm, is being developed. While it is not lower loss than the 1550 nm window, the loss is comparable, and it might simplify some of the complexities of long-length, multiple-wavelength communications systems
APPLICATIONS IN THE REAL WORLD The U.S. military moved quickly to use fiber optics for improved communications and tactical systems. In the early 1970s, the U.S. Navy installed a fiber optic telephone link aboard the U.S.S. Little Rock. The Air Force followed suit by developing its Airborne Light Optical Fiber Technology (ALOFT) program in 1976. Encouraged by the success of these applications, military R&D programs were funded to develop stronger fibers, tactical cables, ruggedized, high-performance components, and numerous demonstration systems ranging from aircraft to undersea applications.
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Commercial applications followed soon after. In 1977, both AT&T and GTE installed fiber optic telephone systems in Chicago and Boston respectively. These successful applications led to the increase of fiber optic telephone networks. By the early 1980s, single-mode fiber operating in the 1310 nm and later the 1550 nm wavelength windows became the standard fiber installed for these networks. Initially, computers, information networks, and data communications were slower to embrace fiber, but today they too find use for a transmission system that has lighter weight cable, resists lightning strikes, and carries more information faster and over longer distances. The broadcast industry also embraced fiber optic transmission. In 1980, broadcasters of the Winter Olympics, in Lake Placid, New York, requested a fiber optic video transmission system for backup video feeds. The fiber optic feed, because of its quality and reliability, soon became the primary video feed, making the 1980 Winter Olympics the first fiber optic television transmission. Later, at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, fiber optics transmitted the first ever digital video signal, an application that continues to evolve today. In the mid-1980s the United States government deregulated telephone service, allowing small telephone companies to compete with the giant, AT&T. Companies like MCI and Sprint quickly went to work installing regional fiber optic telecommunications networks throughout the world. Taking advantage of railroad lines, gas pipes, and other natural rights of way, these companies laid miles fiber optic cable, allowing the deployment of these networks to continue throughout the 1980s. However, this created the need to expand fibers transmission capabilities. In 1990, Bell Labs transmitted a 2.5 Gb/s signal over 7,500 km without regeneration. The system used a soliton laser and an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) that allowed the light wave to maintain its shape and density. In 1998, they went one better as researchers transmitted 100 simultaneous optical signals, each at a data rate of 10
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gigabits (giga means billion) per second for a distance of nearly 250 miles (400 km). In this experiment, dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM technology, which allows multiple wavelengths to be combined into one optical signal, increased the total data rate on one fiber to one terabit per second (10 12 bits per second).
1.4 THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AND BEYOND
Today, DWDM technology continues to develop. As the demand for data bandwidth increases, driven by the phenomenal growth of the Internet, the move to optical networking is the focus of new technologies. At this writing, nearly half a billion people have Internet access and use it regularly. Some 40 million or more households are wired. The world wide web already hosts over 2 billion web pages, and according to estimates people upload more than 3.5 million new web pages everyday. Figure 1.4 - Projected Internet Traffic Increases
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Figure 1.5 - The Growth of Optical Fiber Transmission Capacity
The important factor in these developments is the increase in fiber transmission capacity, which has grown by a factor of 200 in the last of 50 decade. fiber THz or Figure 1.5 illustrates are this trend. Because bandwidth, optic technologys greater, there immense potential
extraordinary
possibilities for future fiber optic applications. Already, the push to bring broadband services, including data, audio, and especially video, into the home is well underway. Broadband service available to a mass market opens up a wide variety of interactive communications for both consumers and businesses, bringing to reality interactive video networks, interactive banking and shopping from the home, and interactive distance learning. The last mile for optical fiber goes from the curb to the television set top, known as fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC), allowing video on demand to become a reality.
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FIBER15 OPTICS
CHAPTER 2
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2. PRINCIPLES OF FIBER OPTICS
2.1 TOTAL INTERNAL REFLECTION Total internal reflection (TIR) is the most important phenomenon for the guiding of light in optical fibers. Under the condition of total internal reflection, light can be completely reflected at a dielectric interface without any reflective coating. It is required for TIR that the ray of light be incidental on a dielectric interface from the high refractive index to the low refractive side. Figure 1.1 shows that TIR occurs over a certain range of incidence angles. If a ray of light propagates at a certain angle,
1(1<c)
from a high refractive index medium (n1) to a low refractive medium (n2), a
portion of light will be reflected back to Medium 1 and another part of light will be refracted into Medium 2 as shown in Figure 1-1(a). This behavior of light can be expressed by Snell's law:
n1 sin 1 = n2 sin 2
(2-1)
If angle 1 is increased to c, 2 reaches 90. The critical angle, c, is defined as:
c = sin-1(n1/n2)
(2-2)
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FIBER17 OPTICS
Figure 2-1. Refraction and reflection at the interface between two media with different indices of refraction (n1>n2). (a) incident angle 1< c; (b) incident angle = c (critical angle); (c) incident angle = 3>c (total internal reflection). At the critical angle c, the refracted ray will travel along the boundary surface. If the angle of incidence is increased further to 3(3>c) at the boundary surface, the ray is totally reflected back into the higher refractive index Medium 1. This phenomenon is called total internal reflection.
However, when total internal reflection occurs, there must be some electromagnetic field disturbance in the second medium because the phase difference between the incident and totally internally reflected wave is not equal to p. An evanescent wave can exist as light leakage due to the phenomenon of frustrated total internal reflection between two closely spaced or contacted media. In a fiber optic image bundle, this phenomenon can be significant between adjacent fibers even when the diameter of a fiber is many times greater than the wavelength of light and this evanescent wave coupling between fibers causes light leakage between adjacent fibers over a region where the separation between the fibers is up to a few wavelengths of light (Kapany, 1968).
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FIBER18 OPTICS 2.2 OPTICAL FIBER COMPOSITION THEORY An optical fiber is a dielectric wave guide. Light can be transmitted through optical fibers by total internal reflection. Usually optical fibers are flexible, thin, cylindrical and made of transparent materials such as glass and plastic. The most abundant and widespread material used to make optical fiber is glass and most often this is an oxide glass based on silica (SiO2) with some additives. Although silica glass is one of the most transparent and low loss materials in the visible wavelength range, in some sensors or medical applications, the fiber length is so short (less than a few meters) that fiber loss and fiber dispersion are not of concern. The required properties are optical quality, mechanical strength, and flexibility. For these reasons, plastic optical fibers have been made with polymethylmeth-acrylate (PMMA) polymer and its copolymers. There are many advantages in the use of plastic fibers. The afterprocessing of plastic fibers is much simpler and less demanding than that for all glass fibers and plastic fibers are lighter and of lower cost than glass fibers. It is well known that plastic fibers are much more flexible than glass fibers. Using the technique of molecular alignment, a 0.27mm diameter PMMA based image guide has exhibited unlimited 180 flexing cycles with a bending radius of 1.5mm (Struik, 1990). This is to be compared with an 8mm bending radius of the same diameter glass fiber. On the other hand, a problem for plastic fibers is withstanding high temperature environments. However, PMMA plastic fibers generally can operate within a continuous maximum temperature of 167F (75C). For short duration, it may be subjected to up to 212F (100C) maximum. In general, optical fibers have a cylindrical core and are surrounded by a cladding. The refractive index of the core (n 1) is always higher than that of the cladding (n2) to guide the light wave. If both (n1) and (n2) are uniform across the cross sections, the fiber is called a step index fiber (SI) and if (n 1) varies with the core radius (i.e., (n1) gradually decreases from the center of the core to the outer radius), it is a gradient or graded index fiber (GRIN). Also optical fibers can be classified as single mode fiber (SMF) and multi-mode fiber (MMF) according to the core size. Consider now in Figure 1-2 a ray incident on the face of the SI fiber at angle A 0, a ray will be refracted inside the core and refracted into the cladding. At angle A 1 a ray will 18
FIBER19 OPTICS be refracted along the boundary of the core and cladding. The angle A c is referred to as the maximum acceptance angle and c is the critical angle for internal reflection. The angles Ac and c are determined by the refractive indices of core and cladding. Therefore, a ray incident on the core-cladding boundary at an angle less than c will not undergo total internal reflection and finally will be lost. However at an angle greater than c , a ray will propagate inside the core by a series of internal reflections.
Figure 2-2. Paths of Light Rays in a Step Index Fiber
At this point, the relationship between angle and refractive index can be derived based on Snell's law. At the point P1 in Figure 1-2: no sin Ac = n1 sin (90-c) Also at the point P2: n1 sin c = n2 sin (90) = n2 (1-4) 19 (1-3)
FIBER20 OPTICS From the equation (1-3) and (1-4): n0 sin Ac = n1 cos c = (n21 - n22)1/2 = NA (1-5)
NA is the numerical aperture of the SI fiber and is defined as the light-gathering power of an optical fiber. When the face of the fiber is in contact with air (n 0 = 1 for air), NA = sin c.
Light guiding in a graded index fiber is shown in Figure 1-3, which can be compared with the picture of light guiding in a step index fiber in Figure 1-2. In SI fiber, the light rays zigzag between the core/cladding on each side of the fiber axis. In GRIN fiber, the gradient in the refractive index gradually bends the rays back toward the axis.
Figure 2-3. Paths of Light Rays in a GRIN Fiber Suppose the core has the maximum index of n1 at the center, and the outer edge has index n2. The index changes gradually from the center of the fiber to the outer edge of the core whose radius is a. The refractive index profile, n(r), in GRIN fiber can be expressed as: n(r) = n2 + C [1-(r/a)g] (1-6)
where C is a constant of proportionality and r is the distance from the fiber axis. The key parameter of g controls the shape of the propagating light rays. For example, if the refractive index falls linearly with radius, g would be 1; if it is a parabola, it would be 2. When g is infinity, the paths of light rays would be the same as that of SI fiber. Figure 1-4 shows the profile of refractive index from core center to the outside edge of 20
FIBER21 OPTICS GRIN fiber with different g-values. In communication fibers, the g-value is very important because the bandwidth of the optical fiber depends on this value. When the profile of refractive index in a GRIN fiber is parabolic (g=2), the bandwidth is maximized.
Figure 2-4. The refractive index profile of GRIN fiber with different g-values.
2.3 ATTENUATION IN FIBER OPTICS Fiber optic transmission and communication are technologies that are constantly growing and becoming more modernized and increasingly being used in the modern day industries. However, dispersion, absorption, and scattering are the three properties of optical fibers that cause attenuation, or a marked decrease in transmitted power, and therefore, have limited progress in areas of high-speed transmission and signal efficiency over long distances. Dispersion occurs when the light traveling down a fiber optic cable spreads out, becomes longer in wavelength and eventually dissipates. Two other major mechanisms of attenuation in optical 21
2.3 Attenuation in Fiber OpticsFIBER22 OPTICS fibers are absorption and scattering. However, new advances are continually being made to combat these losses and improve the reliability of fibers.
Attenuation, a reduction in the transmitted power (Hecht, August 2000), has long been a problem for the fiber optics community. The increase in data loss over the length of a fiber has somewhat hindered widespread use of fiber as a means of communication. However, researchers have established three main sources of this loss: absorption, scattering, and, though it is not commonly studied in this category, dispersion.
2.4 ABSORPTION Absorption occurs when the light beam is partially absorbed by lingering materials, namely water and metal ions, within the core of the fiber as well as in the cladding (see Figure 1). Though absorption in standard glass fibers tends to increase between the critical lengths of 700 and 1550 nanometers (nm) (Hecht, August 2000), almost any type of fiber at any length will have light absorbed by some of the traces of impurities that inevitably appear in all fibers. As the light signal travels through the fiber, each impurity absorbs some of the light, weakening the signal; therefore, longer fibers are more prone to attenuation due to absorption than shorter ones.
Figure 2.5
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2.3 Attenuation in Fiber OpticsFIBER23 OPTICS
2.5 SCATTERING Scattering, another significant aspect of attenuation, occurs when atoms or other particles within the fiber spread the light. This process differs with absorption in that, for the most part, foreign particles on the fiber are not absorbing the light, but the light signal bounces off the particle rather than the fibers wall and spreads the signal in another direction (Single-Mode, 2000). For glass fibers, the foremost type of scattering is Rayleigh scattering, which somewhat contrasts with the accepted definition of scattering. With this process, atoms or other particles within the fiber fleetingly absorb the light signal and instantly re-emit the light in another direction. In this way, Rayleigh scattering appears very much like absorption, but it absorbs and re-directs the light so quickly that it is considered scattering (Hecht, August 2000). Both scattering and absorption are cumulative, in that they keep building up. Light is absorbed and scattered continuously, so the signal at the end of the fiber is almost never exactly the same signal as it was at the beginning. However, for the most part, the signal loss is minimal and does not greatly hinder the communication.
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DISPERSION IN OPTICAL FIBER
3.1 MATERIAL DISPERSION Dispersion in optical fibers can be categorized into three main types. The first is material dispersion, also known as chromatic dispersion. This type of intramodal dispersion results from the fact that the refractive index of the fiber medium varies as a function of wavelength (Keiser, 1983). Since neither the light source nor the fiber optic cable is 100 percent pure, the pulse being transmitted becomes less and less precise as the lights wavelengths are separated over long distances (Thoughts, 2000). The exact same effect occurs when a glass prism disperses light into a spectrum. Wave-guide Dispersion Wave-guide dispersion, another type, is very similar to material dispersion in that they both cause signals of different wavelengths and frequencies to separate from the light pulse (Keiser, 1983). However, wave-guide dispersion depends on the shape, design, and chemical composition of the fiber core. Only 80 percent of the power from a light source is confined to the core in a standard single-mode fiber, while the other 20 percent actually propagates through the inner layer of the cladding. This 20 percent travels at a faster velocity because the refractive index of the cladding is lower than that of the core (Keiser, 1983). Consequently, signals of
differing frequencies and wavelengths are dispersed and the pulse becomes indistinguishable (Lerner, 1997). An increase in the wave-guide dispersion in an optical fiber can be used in order to counterbalance material dispersion and shift the wavelength of zero chromatic dispersion to 1550 nanometers. Engineers used this 25
Figure 3.1FIBER26 OPTICS concept to develop zero-dispersion-shifted fibers designed to have larger wave-guide dispersion (see Figure 2). Developers doped the core with erbium in order to
increase the difference between the refractive indices of the cladding and the core, thus enlarging wave-guide dispersion (Lerner, 1997).
Figure 3.1
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength Curves
Fiber optic dispersion varies as a function of wavelength. The zero dispersion wavelength for a standard single-mode fiber (A) is approximately 1310 nm, while a zero-dispersion-shifted fibers (B) wavelength at zero dispersion is 1550 nm.
3.3 MODAL DISPERSION The third and final significant type of dispersion is related to the fact that a pulse of light transmitted through a fiber optic cable is composed of several modes, or rays, of light instead of only one single beam; therefore, it is called modal dispersion (Thoughts, 2000). Since the rays of the light pulse are not perfectly focused together into one beam, each mode of light travels a different path, some short and some long. As a result, the modes will not be received at the same time, and the signal will be distorted or even lost over long distances (Thoughts, 2000). 26
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER27 OPTICS Solitons, or stable waves, could quite possibly be the ultimate solution to dispersion, but this phenomenon is still being carefully studied and tested (Lerner, 1997). today. However, other dispersion compensation devices are in commercial use For example, erbium-doped fibers, as discussed earlier, and wavelength-
division multiplexing (WDM) effectively shift most systems to 1550 nanometer at zero dispersion (Hecht, July 2000). Although high-performance WDM systems have been developed from novel fiber designs, the dispersion slope and the mode-field diameter of the fiber are still producing complications. New fiber designs, such as reducedslope fibers, have low dispersion over a very wide range because the slope of dispersion is less than 0.05 ps/nm2-km, which is significantly lower than standard fibers (Hecht, July 2000). New concepts and designs are continually being developed to reduce dispersion in optical fibers.
In conclusion, attenuation greatly affects the world of fiber optics technology. Although it is widely accepted that attenuation, which is measured in decibels, occurs as a function of wavelength, researchers are still exploring new ways to decrease loss in fibers. Higher transmission speed and efficient long distance communication are the key qualities that have to be obtained in order for fiber optics to lead our world into the future.
3.4 BRIEF OVER VIEW OF FIBER OPTIC CABLE ADVANTAGES OVER COPPER SPEED: Fiber optic networks operate at high speeds - up into the gigabits BANDWIDTH: large carrying capacity DISTANCE: Signals can be transmitted further without needing to be "refreshed" or strengthened. 27
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER28 OPTICS RESISTANCE: Greater resistance to electromagnetic noise such as radios, motors or other nearby cables. MAINTENANCE: Fiber optic cables costs much less to maintain.
In recent years it has become apparent that fiber-optics are steadily replacing copper wire as an appropriate means of communication signal transmission. They span the long distances between local phone systems as well as providing the backbone for many network systems. Other system users include cable television services, university campuses, office buildings, industrial plants, and electric utility companies. A fiber-optic system is similar to the copper wire system that fiber-optics is replacing. The difference is that fiber-optics use light pulses to transmit information down fiber lines instead of using electronic pulses to transmit information down copper lines. Looking at the components in a fiber-optic chain will give a better understanding of how the system works in conjunction with wire based systems. At one end of the system is a transmitter. This is the place of origin for information coming on to fiber-optic lines. The transmitter accepts coded electronic pulse information coming from copper wire. It then processes and translates that information into equivalently coded light pulses. A light-emitting diode (LED) or an injection-laser diode (ILD) can be used for generating the light pulses. Using a lens, the light pulses are funneled into the fiber-optic medium where they transmit themselves down the line. Think of a fiber cable in terms of very long cardboard roll (from the inside roll of paper towel) that is coated with a mirror. If you shine a flashlight in one you can see light at the far end - even if bent the roll around a corner. Light pulses move easily down the fiber-optic line because of a principle known as total internal reflection. "This principle of total internal reflection states that when the angle of incidence exceeds a critical value, light cannot get out of the glass; instead, the light bounces back in. When this principle is applied to the construction of the fiber-optic strand, it is possible to transmit information down fiber lines in the form of light pulses. 28
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER29 OPTICS
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Types of fiber optic cable

There are three types of fiber optic cable commonly used: single mode, multimode and plastic optical fiber (POF). Transparent glass or plastic fibers which allow light to be guided from one end to the other with minimal loss.
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Fiber optic cable functions as a "light guide," guiding the light introduced at one end of the cable through to the other end. The light source can either be a light-emitting diode (LED)) or a laser. The light source is pulsed on and off, and a light-sensitive receiver on the other end of the cable converts the pulses back into the digital ones and zeros of the original signal. Even laser light shining through a fiber optic cable is subject to loss of strength, primarily through dispersion and scattering of the light, within the cable itself. The faster the laser fluctuates, the greater the risk of dispersion. Light strengtheners, called repeaters, may be necessary to refresh the signal in certain applications. While fiber optic cable itself has become cheaper over time - a equivalent length of copper cable cost less per foot but not in capacity. Fiber optic cable connectors and the equipment needed to install them are still more expensive than their copper counterparts.
4.1 SINGLE MODE CABLE

Single Mode Cable is a single stand of glass fiber with a diameter of 8.3 to 10 microns that has one mode of transmission. Single Mode Fiber with a relatively narrow diameter, through which only one mode will propagate typically 1310 or 1550nm. Carries higher bandwidth than multimode fiber, but requires a light source with a narrow spectral width. Synonyms mono-mode optical fiber, single-mode fiber, singlemode optical waveguide, uni-mode fiber. Single-mode fiber gives you a higher transmission rate and up to 50 times more distance than multimode, but it also costs more. Single-mode fiber has a much smaller core than multimode. The small core and single light-wave virtually eliminate any distortion that could result from overlapping light pulses, providing the least signal attenuation and the highest transmission speeds of any fiber cable 32
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER33 OPTICS type. Single-mode optical fiber is an optical fiber in which only the lowest order bound mode can propagate at the wavelength of interest typically 1300 to 1320nm.
4.2 MULTIMODE CABLE Multimore Cable is made of of glass fibers, with a common diameters in the 50-to-100 micron range for the light carry component (the most common size is 62.5). POF is a newer plastic-based cable which promises performance similar to glass cable on very short runs, but at a lower cost. Multimode fiber gives you high bandwidth at high speeds over medium distances. Light waves are dispersed into numerous paths, or modes, as they travel through the cable's core typically 850 or 1300nm. Typical multimode fiber core diameters are 50, 62.5, and 100 micrometers. However, in long cable runs (greater than 3000 feet [914.4 meters), multiple paths of light can cause signal distortion at the receiving end, resulting in an unclear and incomplete data transmission.
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The use of fiber-optics was generally not available until 1970 when Corning Glass Works was able to produce a fiber with a loss of 20 dB/km. It was recognized that optical fiber would be feasible for telecommunication transmission only if glass could be developed so pure that attenuation would be 20dB/km or less. That is, 1% of the light would remain after traveling 1 km. Today's optical fiber attenuation ranges from 0.5dB/km to 1000dB/km depending on the optical fiber used. Attenuation limits are based on intended application. The applications of optical fiber communications have increased at a rapid rate, since the first commercial installation of a fiber-optic system in 1977. Telephone companies began early on, replacing their old copper wire systems with optical fiber lines. Today's telephone companies use optical fiber throughout their system as the backbone architecture and as the long-distance connection between city phone systems. Cable television companies have also began integrating fiber-optics into their cable systems. The trunk lines that connect central offices have generally been replaced 35
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER36 OPTICS with optical fiber. Some providers have begun experimenting with fiber to the curb using a fiber/coaxial hybrid. Such a hybrid allows for the integration of fiber and coaxial at a neighborhood location. This location, called a node, would provide the optical receiver that converts the light impulses back to electronic signals. The signals could then be fed to individual homes via coaxial cable. Local Area Networks (LAN) is a collective group of computers, or computer systems, connected to each other allowing for shared program software or data bases. Colleges, universities, office buildings, and industrial plants, just to name a few, all make use of optical fiber within their LAN systems. Power companies are an emerging group that have begun to utilize fiber-optics in their communication systems. Most power utilities already have fiber-optic communication systems in use for monitoring their power grid systems. Some 10 billion digital bits can be transmitted per second along an optical fiber link in a commercial network, enough to carry tens of thousands of telephone calls. Hair-thin fibers consist of two concentric layers of high-purity silica glass the core and the cladding, which are enclosed by a protective sheath. Light rays modulated into digital pulses with a laser or a light-emitting diode move along the core without penetrating the cladding. The light stays confined to the core because the cladding has a lower refractive indexa measure of its ability to bend light. Refinements in optical fibers, along with the development of new lasers and diodes, may one day allow commercial fiber-optic networks to carry trillions of bits of data per second.
Total internal refection confines light within optical fibers (similar to looking down a mirror made in the shape of a long paper towel tube). Because the cladding has a lower refractive index, light rays reflect back into the core if they encounter the cladding at a shallow angle (red lines). A ray that exceeds a certain "critical" angle escapes from the fiber (yellow line).
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4.4 STEP-INDEX MULTIMODE FIBER

STEP-INDEX MULTIMODE FIBER has a large core, up to 100 microns in diameter. As a result, some of the light rays that make up the digital pulse may travel a direct route, whereas others zigzag as they bounce off the cladding. These alternative pathways cause the different groupings of light rays, referred to as modes, to arrive separately at a receiving point. The pulse, an aggregate of different modes, begins to spread out, losing its well-defined shape. The need to leave spacing between pulses to prevent overlapping limits bandwidth that is, the amount of information that can be sent. Consequently, this type of fiber is best suited for transmission over short distances, in an endoscope, for instance.
4.5 GRADED-INDEX MULTIMODE FIBER

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Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER38 OPTICS GRADED-INDEX MULTIMODE FIBER contains a core in which the refractive index diminishes gradually from the center axis out toward the cladding. The higher refractive index at the center makes the light rays moving down the axis advance more slowly than those near the cladding. Also, rather than zigzagging off the cladding, light in the core curves helically because of the graded index, reducing its travel distance. The shortened path and the higher speed allow light at the periphery to arrive at a receiver at about the same time as the slow but straight rays in the core axis. The result: a digital pulse suffers less dispersion.
SINGLE-MODE FIBER has a narrow core (eight microns or less), and the index of refraction between the core and the cladding changes less than it does for multimode fibers. Light thus travels parallel to the axis, creating little pulse dispersion. Telephone and cable television networks install millions of kilometers of this fiber every year.
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CHAPTER#5
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BASIC CABLE DESIGN 1 - Two basic cable designs are: Loose-tube cable, used in the majority of outside-plant installations in North America, and tight-buffered cable, primarily used inside buildings. The modular design of loose-tube cables typically holds up to 12 fibers per buffer tube with a maximum per cable fiber count of more than 200 fibers. Loose-tube cables can be all-dielectric or optionally armored. The modular buffer-tube design permits easy drop-off of groups of fibers at intermediate points, without interfering with other protected buffer tubes being routed to other locations. The loose-tube design also helps in the identification and administration of fibers in the system. Single-fiber tight-buffered cables are used as pigtails, patch cords and jumpers to terminate loose-tube cables directly into opto-electronic transmitters, receivers and other active and passive components. Multi-fiber tight-buffered cables also are available and are used primarily for alternative routing and handling flexibility and ease within buildings.
2 - Loose-Tube Cable
In a loose-tube cable design, color-coded plastic buffer tubes house and protect optical fibers. A gel filling compound impedes water penetration. Excess fiber length (relative to buffer tube length) insulates fibers from stresses of installation and environmental loading. Buffer tubes are stranded around a dielectric or steel central member, which serves as an anti-buckling element.
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Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER41 OPTICS The cable core, typically uses aramid yarn, as the primary tensile strength member. The outer polyethylene jacket is extruded over the core. If armoring is required, a corrugated steel tape is formed around a single jacketed cable with an additional jacket extruded over the armor. Loose-tube cables typically are used for outside-plant installation in aerial, duct and direct-buried applications.
3 - Tight-Buffered Cable
With tight-buffered cable designs, the buffering material is in direct contact with the fiber. This design is suited for "jumper cables" which connect outside plant cables to terminal equipment, and also for linking various devices in a premises network. Multi-fiber, tight-buffered cables often are used for intra-building, risers, general building and plenum applications. The tight-buffered design provides a rugged cable structure to protect individual fibers during handling, routing and connectorization. Yarn strength members keep the tensile load away from the fiber. As with loose-tube cables, optical specifications for tight-buffered cables also should include the maximum performance of all fibers over the operating temperature range and life of the cable. Averages should not be acceptable.
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Connector Types
Gruber Industries cable connectors
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Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER43 OPTICS here are some common fiber cable types Distribution Cable
Distribution Cable (compact building cable) packages individual 900m buffered fiber reducing size and cost when compared to breakout cable. The connectors may be installed directly on the 900m buffered fiber at the breakout box location. The space saving (OFNR) rated cable may be installed where ever breakout cable is used. FIS will connectorize directly onto 900m fiber or will build up ends to a 3mm jacketed fiber before the connectors are installed. Indoor/Outdoor Tight Buffer
FIS now offers indoor/outdoor rated tight buffer cables in Riser and Plenum rated versions. These cables are flexible, easy to handle and simple to install. Since they do not use gel, the connectors can be terminated directly onto the fiber without difficult to use breakout kits. This provides an easy and overall less expensive installation. (Temperature rating -40C to +85C). Indoor/Outdoor Breakout Cable
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FIS indoor/outdoor rated breakout style cables are easy to install and simple to terminate without the need for fanout kits. These rugged and durable cables are OFNR rated so they can be used indoors, while also having a -40c to +85c operating temperature range and the benefits of fungus, water and UV protection making them perfect for outdoor applications. They come standard with 2.5mm sub units and they are available in plenum rated versions. Corning Cable Systems Freedm LST Cables
Corning Cable Systems FREEDM LST cables are OFNR-rated, UV-resistant, fully waterblocked indoor/outdoor cables. This innovative DRY cable with water blocking technology eliminates the need for traditional flooding compound, providing more efficient and craft-friendly cable preparation. Available in 62.5m, 50m, Singlemode and hybrid versions. Krone Indoor Outdoor Dry Loose Tube Cable
KRONEs innovative line of indoor/outdoor loose tube cables are designed to meet all the rigors of the outside plant environment, and the necessary fire 44
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER45 OPTICS ratings to be installed inside the building. These cables eliminate the gel filler of traditional loose tube style cables with super absorbent polymers. Loose Tube Cable
Loose tube cable is designed to endure outside temperatures and high moisture conditions. The fibers are loosely packaged in gel filled buffer tubes to repel water. Recommended for use between buildings that are unprotected from outside elements. Loose tube cable is restricted from inside building use, typically allowing entry not to exceed 50 feet (check your local codes). Aerial Cable/Self-Supporting
Aerial cable provides ease of installation and reduces time and cost. Figure 8 cable can easily be separated between the fiber and the messenger. Temperature range ( -55C to +85C) Hybrid & Composite Cable
Hybrid cables offer the same great benefits as our standard indoor/outdoor cables, with the convenience of installing multimode and singlemode fibers all in one pull. Our composite cables offer optical fiber along with solid 14 gauge wires suitable for a variety of uses including power, grounding and other electronic controls. 45
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER46 OPTICS Armored Cable
Armored cable can be used for rodent protection in direct burial if required. This cable is non-gel filled and can also be used in aerial applications. The armor can be removed leaving the inner cable suitable for any indoor/outdoor use. (Temperature rating -40C to +85C) Low Smoke Zero Halogen (LSZH)
Low Smoke Zero Halogen cables are offered as as alternative for halogen free applications. Less toxic and slower to ignite, they are a good choice for many international installations. We offer them in many styles as well as simplex, duplex and 1.6mm designs. This cable is riser rated and contains no flooding gel, which makes the need for a separate point of termination unnecessary. Since splicing is eliminated, termination hardware and labor times are reduced, saving you time and money. This cable may be run through risers directly to a convenient network hub or splicing closet for interconnection.
What's the best way to terminate fiber optic cable? That depends on the application, cost considerations and your own personal preferences. The following connector comparisons can make the decision easier. Epoxy & Polish Epoxy & polish style connectors were the original fiber optic connectors. They still represent the largest segment of connectors, in both quantity used 46
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER47 OPTICS and variety available. Practically every style of connector is available including ST, SC, FC, LC, D4, SMA, MU, and MTRJ. Advantages include: Very robust. This connector style is based on tried and true technology, and can withstand the greatest environmental and mechanical stress when compared to the other connector technologies. This style of connector accepts the widest assortment of cable jacket diameters. Most connectors of this group have versions to fit onto 900um buffered fiber, and up to 3.0mm jacketed fiber. Versions are. available that hold from 1 to 24 fibers in a single connector. Installation Time: There is an initial setup time for the field technician who must prepare a workstation with polishing equipment and an epoxy-curing oven. The termination time for one connector is about 25 minutes due to the time needed to heat cure the epoxy. Average time per connector in a large batch can be as low as 5 or 6 minutes. Faster curing epoxies such as anaerobic epoxy can reduce the installation time, but fast cure epoxies are not suitable for all connectors. Skill Level: These connectors, while not difficult to install, do require the most supervised skills training, especially for polishing. They are best suited for the high-volume installer or assembly house with a trained and stable work force. Costs: Least expensive connectors to purchase, in many cases being 30 to 50 percent cheaper than other termination style connectors. However, factor in the cost of epoxy curing and ferrule polishing equipment, and their associated consumables. Pre-Loaded Epoxy or No-Epoxy & Polish There are two main categories of no-epoxy & polish connectors. The first are connectors that are pre-loaded with a measured amount of epoxy. These connectors reduce the skill level needed to install a connector but 47
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER48 OPTICS they don't significantly reduce the time or equipment need-ed. The second category of connectors uses no epoxy at all. Usually they use an internal crimp mechanism to stabilize the fiber. These connectors reduce both the skill level needed and installation time. ST, SC, and FC connector styles are available. Advantages include: Epoxy injection is not required. No scraped connectors due to epoxy over-fill. Reduced equipment requirements for some versions. Installation Time: Both versions have short setup time, with pre-loaded epoxy connectors having a slightly longer setup. Due to curing time, the preloaded epoxy connectors require the same amount of installation time as standard connectors, 25 minutes for 1 connector, 5-6 minutes average for a batch. Connectors that use the internal crimp method install in 2 minutes or less. Skill Level: Skill requirements are reduced because the crimp mechanism is easier to master than using epoxy. They provide maximum flexibility with one technology and a balance between skill and cost. Costs: Moderately more expensive to purchase than a standard connector. Equipment cost is equal to or less than that of standard connectors. Consumable cost is reduced to polish film and cleaning sup-plies. Cost benefits derive from reduced training requirements and fast installation time. No-Epoxy & No-Polish Easiest and fastest connectors to install; well suited for contractors who cannot cost-justify the training and supervision required for standard connectors. Good solution for fast field restorations. ST, SC, FC, LC, and MTRJ connector styles are available. Advantages include: No setup time required. Lowest installation time per connector. 48
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER49 OPTICS Limited training required. Little or no consumables costs. Installation Time: Almost zero. Its less than 1 minute regardless of number of connectors. Skill level: Requires minimal training, making this type of connector ideal for installation companies with a high turnover rate of installers and/or that do limited amounts of optical-fiber terminations. Costs: Generally the most expensive style connector to purchase, since some of the labor (polishing) is done in the factory. Also, one or two fairly expensive installation tools may be required. However, it may still be less expensive on a cost-per-installed-connector basis due to lower labor cost.
Fiber Optic Network Topologies
All networks involve the same basic principle: information can be sent to, shared with, passed on,
or bypassed within a number of computer stations (nodes) and a master computer (server). Network applications include LANs, MANs, WANs, SANs intrabuilding and interbuilding communications, broadcast distribution, intelligent transportation systems (ITS), telecommunications, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks, etc. In addition to its oft-cited advantages (i.e., bandwidth, durability, ease of installation, immunity to EMI/RFI and harsh environmental conditions, long-term economies, etc.), optical fiber better accommodates todays increasingly complex network. architectures than copper alternatives. Figure 1 illustrates the interconnection between these types of networks.
Figure 1 Interconnections Between Different Network Types
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tworks can be configured in a number of topologies. These include a bus, with or without a backbone, a star network, a ring network, which can be redundant and/or self-healing, or some combination of these. Each topology has its strengths and weaknesses, and some network types work better for one application while another application would use a different network type. Local, metropolitan, or wide area networks generally use a combination, or mesh topology.
Network
network topology, also called a daisy-chain topology has each computer directly connected on a main communication line. One end has a controller, and the other end has a terminator. Any computer that wants to talk to the main computer must wait its turn for access to the transmission line. In a straight network topology, only one computer can communicate at a time. When a computer uses the network, the information is sent to the controller, which then sends the information down the line of computers until it reaches the terminating computer. Each computer in the line receives the same information. Figure 2 illustrates a bus network topology.
Figure 2 Bus Network Topology
Figure 3 Bus Network with Backbone
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A bus network with a backbone operates in the same fashion, but each computer has an individual
connection to the network. A bus network with a backbone offers greater reliability than a simple bus topology. In a simple bus, if one computer in the network goes down, the network is broken. A backbone adds reliability in that the loss of one computer does not disrupt the entire network. Figure 3 illustrates this topology with a backbone.
Star Network
Star networks incorporate multiport star couplers in to achieve the topology. Once again, a main
controlling computer or computer server interconnects with all the other computers in the network. As with the bus topology with a backbone, the failure of one computer node does not cause a failure in the network. Figure 4 illustrates a star network topology.
h the bus and the star network topologies use a central computer that controls the system inputs and outputs. Also called a server, this computer has external connections, to the Internet for example, as well as connections to the computer nodes in the network.
Networks
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g networks operate like bus networks with the exception of a terminating computer. In this configuration, the computers in the ring link to a main communication cable. The network receives information via a token containing information requested by one or more computers on the network. The token passes around the ring until the requesting computer(s) have received the data. The token uses a packet of information that serves as an address for the computer that requested the information. The computer then empties the token, which continues to travel the ring until another computer requests information to be put into the token. Figure 5 illustrates this topology.
Figure 5 Token Ring Network Topology
advanced version of the ring network uses two communication cables sending information in both directions. Known as a counter-rotating ring, this creates a fault tolerant network that will redirect transmission in the other direction, should a node on the network detect a disruption. This network uses fiber optic transceiver, one controlling unit in set in master mode along with several nodes that have been set as remote units. The first remote data transceiver receives the transmission from the master unit and retransmits it to the next remote unit as well as transmitting it back to the master unit. An interruption in the signal line on the first ring is bypassed via the second ring, allowing the network to maintain integrity. Figure 6 illustrates this configuration as it might be used in a ITS installation.
Figure 6 Self-healing Ring Topology
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Optical Fiber Fabrication

1.1 Fiber Materials
There are many materials available for use in fiber fabrication. Only a few meet the special requirements of optical fibers: The material must allow us to make long, thin, and flexible fibers. The material must be transparent at a particular wavelength in order to guide light efficiently. Physically compatible materials that have slightly different refractive indices for the core and cladding must be available.(The index of refraction or IOR is a measure of the speed of light in a material). Finally, we must have a material that is cheap and abundant. Two materials that are commonly used and meet all of these requirements are plastics and glass.
1)
2)
3)
4)
1 Glass Fibers 53
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER54 OPTICS largest category of optically transparent glasses from which optical fibers are made consists of the oxide glasses. The most common of which is silica (SiO2). Glass composed of pure silica is referred to as silica glass, fused silica, or vitreous silica. The glass is made by fusing mixtures of metal oxides, sulfides or selenides. Some of its desirable properties are a resistance to deformation at high temperatures, a high resistance to breakage from thermal shock because of its low thermal expansion, good chemical durability, and a high transparency in both the visible and infrared regions of interest to many fiber optic systems.
rder to produce two similar materials having slightly different indices of refraction for the core and the cladding, fluorine or various oxides are commonly added to the silica. These dopants can be classified into two basic groups: dopants, which increase the IOR, and dopants, which decrease the IOR. For example, B2O3 and fluorine dopants decrease a material's IOR, while GeO2, P2O5 will increase a materials IOR as shown in the Figure 1. The list below shows some various dopants used to make the core and cladding of various fibers.
Cladding Core SiO2 B2O3-SiO2 GeO2-SiO2 SiO2 P2O5-SiO2 SiO2
Figure1: Refractive index as a function of dopants materials and their concentration 54
2 Halide Glass Fibers second types of glass used are halide glass fibers. It has been found that fluoride glasses have extremely low transmission losses at wavelengths in the range from 0.2 to 8 m. Fluoride glasses belong to a general family of halide glasses in which the anions are from elements in-group VII of the periodic table, namely fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine. The material that researchers have concentrated on is a heavy metal fluoride glass, which uses ZrF4 as the major component. Several other constituents need to be added to make a glass that has moderate resistance to crystallization. ZBLAN is the material forms the core of a glass fiber .to make a lower refractive index glass, one partially replaces ZrF4 by HaF4 to get ZHBLAN cladding. Theoretically, the minimum attenuation for these materials is estimated at 0.001dB/km.
3 Chalgenide Glass Fiber
ddition to allowing the creation of optical amplifier, the nonlinear properties of glass fibers can be exploited for other applications, such as all optical switches and fiber lasers. Chalgenide glass is one candidate for these uses because of its high optical nonlinearity and its long interaction length. Chalgenide glass fibers, contains arsenic, germanium, phosphorus, sulfur, selenium, or tellurium. Theoretically, the minimum attenuation for these materials has been estimated at 1dB/m.
4 Active Glass Fibers
orporating rare-earth elements (atomic numbers 57-71) in to a normally passive glass gives the resulting material new optical and magnetic properties. These new properties allow the material to perform amplification, attenuation, and phase retardation on the light passing through it. Two commonly used materials for fiber lasers are erbium and neodymium.
.5 Plastic Optical Fibers
mentioned earlier, plastics are sometimes used in place of glass optical fibers. Plastic fiber is traditionally used in place of glass for short distances (up to 100m) and abusive environments where its mechanical strength makes it superior. For example, plastics can be used in medical applications and in some sensors where only shorter fiber lengths are needed. In addition, the mechanical flexibility of plastic allows these fibers to have large cores. These factors permit its use in inexpensive, economically attractive systems. The following are examples of some of the compounds used in plastic fibers: 55
olysterene core/methyl methacrylate cladding.
olymethyl methacrylate core/copolymer cladding.
mparing the plastic fibers to their glass counterpart, the transmission spectrum of the two is similar. Plastic fibers are lighter and lower in cost than glass. However, plastics are less widely used because of their high attenuation in comparison to their glass counterpart. Another problem is plastics limited operating temperature range.
2 Fiber Fabrication
Fibers can be drawn directly from melts of silica in crucibles. Vapor phase oxidation.
re are two basic techniques used in the fabrication of optical fibers:
1 Double crucible method double crucible method can be used to make both silica and halide glass fibers. The technique is simple and straightforward. One glass rod is made from silica powders for the core and one for the cladding. The rods are then used as feedstock for each of two concentric crucibles. The inner contains the molten core, while the outer contains the cladding. In a continuous process, the fiber is drawn from the molten state. The disadvantage of this method is the possibility of introducing contaminants during the melting process. Figure 2 illustrates the double-crucible drawing process.
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Figure 2: Double-crucible fiber drawing process
2 Vapor phase oxidation
h direct drawing, it is difficult to get pure and homogeneous fibers; therefore this method is not commonly used. The vapor phase oxidation processes have proven to be more successful. These processes are usually done in two steps: The first being the preparation of the preform. The second being the drawing of the fiber.
3 Preparation of the preform
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Figure 3: Preform
60 to 120 cm long. This preform consists of a core surrounded by a cladding with a desired refractive-index profile, a given attenuation, and other characteristics; in other words, this is a desired optical fiber, but on a much larger scale. main reason a preform is prepared is to have a "drawable" material that is clean, low in OH concentration, low in metallic-ion contaminants, and inexpensive. Many techniques have been developed to prepare these preforms. Some common commercially used methods are Outside Vapor-Deposition, Modified Chemical Vapor Deposition, Vapor Phase Axial Deposition, and Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition. They differ mainly by the way the soot is deposited. preform is made by vapor-phase oxidation, in which two gases, SiCl4 and O2, are mixed at a high temperature to produce silicon dioxide (SiO2):
shown in the Figure3 a perform is a cylinder of silica composition 10 to 25 mm in diameter and about
Silicon dioxide, or pure silica, is usually obtained in the form of small particles (about 0.1 m) called "soot." This soot is deposited on the target rod or tube. The depositing of the silica soot, layer upon layer, forms a homogeneous transparent cladding material. To change the value of a cladding's refractive index, some dopants are used. For example, fluorine (F) is used to decrease the cladding's refractive index in a depressed-cladding configuration. soot for the core material is made by mixing three gases: SiCl4, GeCl4, and O2 which results in a mixture of SiO2 and GeO2. The degree of doping is controlled by simply changing the amount of GeCl4 gas added to the mixture. The same principle is used for doping other materials. 58
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER59 OPTICS the exact amount of dopants added to each layer, thus controlling the refractive-index profile. Figure1 explains the role of several widely used dopants. vapor-phase oxidation process produces extremely pure material whose characteristics are under the absolute control of the manufacturer.
ce deposition is made by the application of silica layers top one another, the manufacturer can control
4 Outside Vapor-Deposition
side Vapor Deposition (OVD), also called the "soot process", was first developed by Corning Incorporated. This fiber was the first to have a loss of less then 20dB/km. The three main steps involved are laydown (Figure4-a), consolidation (Figure4-b), and drawing. In the laydown process, several materials such as SiCl4, GeCl4, BCl3 and O2 are allowed to react in a hot flame to produce soot (Figure 5). The soot is in turn deposited into a rotating ceramic rod known as a mandrel. Initially the core material is deposited, followed by the cladding. The soot builds up on the rod, and layer-by-layer, a cylindrical preform is built up. In preparing the preform, many characteristics like glass composition, refractive index, and the dimensions of the core and cladding can be controlled. Next, the deposited preform is removed from the rod and placed in a consolidation furnace. This high temperature furnace removes any water vapor that may be in the preform. The resulting product is a solid, dense, glass blank. Now the blank is ready to be placed in a draw tower where a continuous fiber is made into a strand. It is during the draw process, discussed in more detail below, that the hole in the tube collapses and a perfectly symmetrical fiber is formed.
er step or graded index performs can be made.
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Figure 4: Two phases of the OVD process: (a) Laydown; (b) consolidation.
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Figure 5: Outside Vapor-Deposition
1.2.5 Vapor phase axial deposition Another similar method of producing preforms is vapor phase axial deposition (VAD). In VAD, the SiO2 particles are formed in the same manner as in OVD. The particles are deposited onto the end of a glass rod, which is in turn attached in the upright position to a motor. A porous preform is grown axially as a pulling machine rotates the rod upward. The preform is then made into a solid rod by zone melting. The preform is ready to be drawn into a fiber. This method is done completely inside a closed deposition chamber. It therefore has the advantage of a clean environment. Also, there is no central hole created, as is the case for OVD. Finally, VAD has proven to be cost effective because the preform can be made in continuous lengths. This method is shown in Figure 6.
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Figure 6: Vapor phase axial deposition 1.2.6 Modified Chemical Vapor Deposition Modified Chemical Vapor Deposition, or MCVD, is a process that was developed at AT&T Bell Laboratories in the 1970's. It was so successful that AT&T used it to mass-produce optical fiber in the 1980's. It provided a simple and straightforward means of manufacturing high-quality optical fibers. MCVD differs from OVD in that the deposition occurs inside of a fuse-quartz tube instead of on the outside, hence the term modified. The process works as follows: Reactants (SiCl4+ O2) are introduced at one end of the rotating tube while an exhaust is located on the other end. A burner that traverses back and forth along the length of the tube sinters the deposited SiO2 particles to a clear glass layer. When the desired thickness is achieved, a valve is closed to stop the flow of reactants. As one might expect, the flow of reactants and the speed of the traversing oxy-hydrogen burner have to be closely monitored using a video camera. Finally, the temperature of the burner is increased so that the rod collapses onto itself resulting in a solid preform. An advantage of this method is that it is an inherently clean process since the reaction occurs inside of the tube. 62
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER63 OPTICS According to The Journal of Lightwave Technology, this method produces the highest quality product under factory conditions. Other advantage this method has is the ability to mass-produce the fiber quickly under various design requirements while using the same equipment. This method is shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7: Modified Chemical Vapor Deposition 1.2.7 Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition Scientists at Phillips Research invented plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition, or PCVD. Clear glass instead of soot is also deposited inside a silica tube as is done in the MCVD process. Nonisothermal plasma in the microwave frequency range (2.45GHz) is used instead of a torch or flame. The plasma makes the reaction proceed at about 1000 to 1200C. This results in very thin layers being deposited inside the tube. Although this method allows us to grow layers at relatively low temperatures, the deposition rate is rather slow in comparison to other methods. This method is shown in Figure 8.
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Figure 8: Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition 1.2.8 Fiber Drawing
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Figure 9: Schematic of a typical drawing process. The major steps of a typical drawing process are shown in Figure 9. The preform is put into a draw furnace, where the bottom tip is heated to melting. This molten piece now starts to fall, forming a fiber with a 125-m outer diameter. Diameter-monitoring equipment controls the actual fiber diameter by changing, if necessary, the rate of drawing that is executed by a tractor assembly. A coating applicator applies a coating over the cladding. Concentricity-monitoring equipment controls this parameter. The coating is cured by ultraviolet lamps or some other heat source. The coated fiber is then wound onto ready-to-ship reels.
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Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER66 OPTICS From this oversimplified description you might get the impression that drawing a fiber is very simple. It is not. It took many years of intensive, costly research and development efforts and the brainpower of thousands of scientists and engineers to make this process commercially possible. Critical to the process, of course, is the rate of drawing. And herein lies a dilemma. On the one hand, the slower the drawing, the better the manufacturer can control fiber quality. On the other hand, the faster the drawing, the more fiber one can produce in a given amount of time. It's clear, then, that there can be no "best" rate in an industrial operation, where both quality and productivity are demanded. So one has to find an acceptable compromise. Each of the processes described here has its own advantages and drawbacks associated with the drawing rate at which it runs. To give you some sense of how widely the numbers vary, the draw rate can run from 200 m/min to 2,000 m/min. To reach such a speed, all rotating parts of the drawing mechanism must be manufactured to extremely tight tolerances and the tension level to which the optical fiber is subjected must be controlled with a high degree of accuracy. Even though Figure 9 shows only diameter-measuring equipment, the manufacturer actually measures and controls many of the fiber's characteristics during the fiber-draw stage, when some serious problems can crop up. Among them are internal problems, such as bubbles, contamination, and discontinuity, and external problems, like neck-downs, lumps, and flaws. Control of the external problems is very important because they can weaken a fiber. This is why manufacturers not only detect them constantly but also compare their size with threshold values. If you analyze Figure 9 closely, you will find many problems that need to be resolved at each particular step and for the entire process. Both stages of fiber manufacturing are fully automated and are performed in a clean, climatecontrolled room. Obviously, the manufacturers use high-precision measuring equipment to automatically control each step of the fabrication process. For example, preform analyzers measure the critical characteristics of the optical-fiber preform. Also, specific measurement systems control fiber geometry, the refractive-index profile, and the coating geometry.
66
1.3 Fiber Coating

Requirements As you know from the previous sections, an optical fibera core surrounded by claddinghas to be coated. Figure 9 shows that manufacturers coat on-line. A liquid polymer is applied by the coating applicator as a fiber passes through the coating line. This liquid is solidified by heat or ultraviolet curing. The main function of the coating is to protect the fiber from any external damage. But a closer look reveals that the coating has several other major functions: Adhesion: The coating, obviously, has to stick firmly to the glass surface of the fiber. Ability to be stripped: To connector a fiber, the coating has to be stripped. The stripping force has to be very small to facilitate handling of the fiber during installation. This force has to be stable in any environmentdry or wet. The range of the stripping force is between 1.4 N and 4.2 N. If you think that the above two functions seem to conflict, you are right. It's a manufacturing problem optical fiber producers have to live with today. The conflict typifies the kinds of problems fiber makers have yet to resolve. Toughness: This quality is necessary to provide enhanced abrasion protection and to enable fiber handling and cabling without loss of strength. Toughness is gauged by elastic (Young) modulus testing, which determines whether a coating is soft or hard. Moisture resistance: The coating is the line of defense protecting the fiber from moisture. This characteristic, in a sense, determines a fiber's aging and stability properties. Moisture resistance is determined by measuring the increase in attenuation during the fiber's exposure to water.
Many other parameters characterize coatings but these are the important ones to know. The point is simply this: The coating is a critical component of an optical fiber. It determines bending sensitivity, abrasion resistance, static-fatigue protection, and many other important properties of the fiber.
67
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER68 OPTICS We've considered the role of the coating from the internal standpoint, in other words, how the coating protects the fiber. But there is another important consideration: how the coating works with a fiber cable. From this vantage, a coating should be smooth enough to be put inside a tight buffer and strong enough to protect the fiber from undergoing changes in its optical properties. Solutions To meet these complex requirements, manufacturers developed many coatings, which vary in design, materials used, curing processes, and so on. The overall point to bear in mind is this: The coating, along with its fiber, is designed for a specific application. For example, a tight buffer and a loose buffer apply different forces to the fiber, thus requiring different coating characteristics. There are two main types of design: single-layer and double-layer coatings. In the single-layer design, the manufacturer tries to satisfy a wide range of requirements by choosing the proper material and coating thickness, among other characteristics. In the double-layer design, the inner layer is a soft coating. It provides good adhesion and cushions the fiber. The hard outer layer protects against an adverse environment, including abrasion. The outer diameter of a coated optical fiber ranges from 245 m to 900 m. Armed with this new knowledge, you will now have a better understanding of the manufacturers' data sheets.
1.4 Cable Design

There are two distinctly different methods used to protect the optic fibers: Loose tube. Tight buffer designs. Loose tube designs to be used externally. Tight buffer designs to be used within buildings. Some important mechanical properties must be considered in cable design: Maximum allowable load on the cable: since this factor determines the length of cable that can be reliably installed. In copper cables the wires themselves are generally the principal loads 68
1.
2.
1.
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER69 OPTICS bearing members of the cable, and elongations of more than 20 percent are possible without fracture. On the other hand, extremely strong optical fibers tend to break at 4 percent elongation, fiber elongations during cable manufacture and installation should be limited to 0.1-0.2 percent. Fiber brittleness: since glass fibers do not deform plastically, they have a low tolerance for absorbing energy from impact loads. Hence the outer sheath of optical cable must be designed to protect the glass fibers inside from impact forces. In addition, the outer sheath should not crush when subjected to side forces, and it should provide protection corrosive environmental elements. In underground installations, a heavy-gauge-metal outer sleeve may be required to protect against potential damage from burrowing rodents, such as gophers. In designing optical fiber cables, several types of fiber arrangements are possible and a large variety of components could be included in the construction, As shown in the Figure 10 and Figure 11.
2.
Figure 10: Tight Buffer construction
69
36-fiber
288-fiber
Figure 11: Loose tube construction
Measurements
The following figure shows some of the relevant test parameters and at what points in WDM link they are of importance.
70
Test Equipments
2.1.1 Optical power meter Optical power measurement is the most basic function in fiber optical metrology. Some form of optical power detection is involved in almost every piece of light wave test equipment. Hand held instruments come in wide Varity of types with different levels of capabilities. Multiwavelength optical power meters that use photodetectors are the most common instrument for measuring optical signal power levels. Usually, the meter outputs are given in dBm (where 0 dBm=1 mW) or dB (where 0 dB=1W). Figure 12 shows a compact hand held Model FOT-90A fiber optic power meter from EXFO. In this versatile instrument, various photodetectors heads that have different performance characteristics are available .for example, using a Ge detector allows a measuring range of +18 to 60 dBm in the 780 to 1600 nm wavelength band, whereas an InGaAs detector allows a measuring range of +3 to 73 dBm in the 840 to 1650 nm wavelength band. An RS-232 interface together with application software allows a user to download the measurements and view, export, or print them in either tabular or graphical form. Figure 13 shows another hand-held tester that also contains optical sources so it can do more sophisticated optical power measuring .For example this instruments can function as a power 71
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER72 OPTICS meter, an optical-loss tester for automatically measuring loss in a fiber in two directions at two different wavelengths, an optical return-loss tester for measuring the quality of optical patch cords, a visual fault indicator for locating breaks and failures in a fiber cable.
Figure 12: Optical power meter (Model FOT-90A, from EXFO)
Figure 13: Multipurpose test instrument (Model FOT-920A, from EXFO)
72
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER73 OPTICS 2.1.2 Optical Attenuators In many laboratory or production tests, the characteristics of high optical signal level may need to be measured. If the level is very high, such as a strong output from an optical amplifier, the signal may need to be precisely attenuated before being measured. This is done to prevent instrument damage or to avoid overload distortion in the measurements. Optical attenuators allow a user to reduce the optical signal level. For example up to 60 dB (a factor of 10^6) in precise steps at a specified wavelength, which is usually 1310 or 1550 nm. The capabilities of attenuators range from simple tape-cassette-sized devices for quick field measurements that may only need to be accurate to 0.5 dB, to laboratory instruments that have an attenuation precision of 0.001 dB. 2.1.3 Tunable laser Sources Tunable laser sources are important instruments for test that measure the wavelength response of an optical component or link. Figure 14 shows an example from Hewlett-Packard (Model 8168B) that generates a true single mode laser line for every selected wavelength point. The source is an external cavity semiconductor laser. A movable diffraction grating is used as a tunable filter for wavelength selection. Depending on the source and grating combination, typical instrument is tunable over either the 1280 to 1330 nm or the 1450 to 1565 nm band. Wavelength scans, with an output power that is flat across the scanned spectral band, can be done automatically. The minimum output power of these instruments is 10dBm and the absolute wavelength accuracy is typically 0.1 nm.
Figure 14: Tunable laser source (Model HP-8168, from Hewlett-Packard) 2.1.4 Optical spectrum analyzers
73
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER74 OPTICS Optical spectrum analyzers measure optical power as function of wavelength. The most common implementation uses a diffraction grating based optical fiber, which yields wavelength resolutions to less than 0.1 nm. To measure very narrow linewidths for example the 10 MHz linewidth of typical single frequency semiconductor laser-optical analyzers employing homodyne and heterodyne techniques are used. Figure 15 shows a general-purpose optical spectrum analyzer with a typical measurement trace on the display screen.
Figure 15: A general-purpose optical spectrum analyzer (Model HP-70951A, from Hewlett-Packard) 2.1.5 Optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) The long-term workhorse instrument, in optical systems is the OTDR. In addition to locating faults within an optical link, this instruments measures parameters such as attenuation, length, connector and splice losses, and reflectance levels. A typical OTDR consists of an optical source and receiver, a data acquisition module, a central processing unit (CPU), an information storage unit for retaining data either in the internal memory or on an external disk, and a display. Figure 16 shows an example of OTDR. Figure 17 shows the bases of the OTDR technique. OTDR fundamentally is an optical radar. It operates by periodically launching narrow laser pulses into one end of a fiber under test by using either a directional coupler or beam splitter. The properties of the optical fiber link are then determined by analyzing the amplitude and temporal characteristics of the waveform of the backscatter light.
74
Figure 16: Optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) (Model FTB300, from EXFO)
Figure 17: Principle of an Optical time-domain Reflectometer (OTDR) OTDR Applications: Figure 18 shows a typical trace as would be seen on the display screen of an OTDR. The scale of the vertical axis is logarithmic and measures the returning (back-reflected) signal in decibels. The horizontal axis denotes the distance between the instrument and the measurement point in the fiber the backscattered waveform has four distinct features: A large initial pulse resulting from Fresenel reflection at the input end of the fiber. A long decaying tail resulting from Rayleigh scattering in the reverse direction as the input pulse travels a long the fiber. Abrupt shifts in the curve caused by optical loss at joints or connectors in the fiber line. Positive spikes arising from Fresenel reflection at the far end of the fiber, at fiber joints, and at fiber imperfections. Fresenel reflection and Rayleigh scattering principally produce the backscattered light. Fresenel reflection occurs when light enters a medium that has a different index of reflection. 75
1)
2)
3)
4)
Figure 18: Representative trace of backscattered optical power as displayed on OTDR screen Attenuation Measurements: The optical power at a distance x from the input coupler can be written as
x
P( x)
P(0) exp[
0
( y )dy]
..(1)
( y) is the fiber loss coefficient in Km-1
here, P(0) is the fiber input power and
which may be position dependent . the parameter 2 ( y) can be measured in natural units called nepers , which are related to the loss
( y) in decibels per kilometer through the relationship
( Km 1 )
2 (nepers)
(dB)
1 10 log e
(dB)
1 4.343 (2)
under the assumption that the scattering is the same at all points along the optical waveguide and is independent of the modal distribution ,the power P R(x) scattered in the reverse direction at the point x is PR(x) = S P(x) ..(3) Here ,S is the fraction of the total power that is scattered in the backward direction and trapped in the fiber. thus the back scattered power from the point x that is seen by the photodetector is
x
PD ( x)
where
PR ( x) exp[
0
( y )dy]
(4)
( y) is the loss coefficient for the reverse scattered light .since the modes in the fiber
excited by the backscattered light can be different from those launched in the forward direction, the parameter
R
( y) may be different from
( y) .
substituting Eqs.1,2,and 3 into Eq 4 yields 76

PD ( x) SP(0) exp[ 2 ( x) x 10 log e (5)
where the average attenuation coefficient
(x) is defined as
1 [ ( y) 2x 0
( y )]dy
(6)
using this equation ,the average attenuation coefficient can be found from experimental semi log data plots such as the one shown in Figure 18. For example, the average attenuation between two points x1 and x2 , where x1>x2 is
10[log PD ( X 2 ) log PD ( X 1 )] 2( X 2 X 1 )
Where PD is the backscattered power from point X that is seen by the photodetector. Fiber Fault Location: The fiber length L (and, hence, the position of the break or fault) can be calculated from the time difference between the pulses reflected from the front and far ends of the fiber. if this time difference is t, then the length L is given by
L ct 2n1
(2)
Where n1 is the core refractive index of the fiber. the factor 2 accounts for the fact that light travel s a length L from the source to the break point and then another length L on the return trip. 2.1.6 Multifunction optical test systems For laboratory, manufacturing, and quality-control environments, there are instruments with exchangeable modules for performing a variety of measurements. Figure 19 shows an example from EXFO, which includes a basic mainframe and expansion unit. The mainframe is a microprocessor-based unit that coordinates data compilation and analysis from variety of test instruments. This test system can control external instruments that have RS232 communication capability, and it has networking capability for remote access from a computer. The plug in modules cover a wide range of test capabilities. Example functions include single channel or
77
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER78 OPTICS multichannel power meter, tunable laser sources, variable attenuator, optical spectrum analyzer, and PMD analyzer (polarization-mode dispersion).
Figure 19: Multifunction Optical Test System (Model IQ-203, from EXFO)
2.2 Attenuation measurements

Attenuation of an optical power in a fiber waveguide is a result of absorption process, scattering mechanisms, and waveguide effects. The manufacturer is generally interested in the magnitude of the individual contributions to attenuation, whereas the system engineer who uses the fiber is more concerned with the total transmission loss of the fiber. Here we shall treat measurements techniques for total transmission loss. Three basic methods are available for determining attenuation in fibers. The earliest devised and most common approach involves measuring the optical power transmitted through a long and a short length of the same fiber using identical input couplings. This method is known as the cutback technique .A less accurate but nondestructive method is the insertion-loss method, which is useful for cables with connectors on them. 2.2.1 Cutback technique The cutback technique, which is a destructive method requiring access to both ends of the fiber. Is illustrated in Figure 20. Measurements may be made at one or more specific wavelengths, or alternatively a spectral response may be required over a range of wavelengths. To find the transmission loss, the optical power is first measured at the output (or far end) of the fiber. Then 78
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER79 OPTICS without disturbing the input condition, the fiber is cut off a few meters from the source, and the output power at this near end is measured. If P F and PN represent the output powers of the far and near ends of the fiber, respectively, the average loss in decibels per kilometer is given by:
P 10 log N L PF
(3)
Where L (in kilometer) is the separation of the two-measurment points. The reason for following these steps is that it is extremely difficult to calculate the exact amount of optical power launched in to the fiber. By using the cutback method, the optical power emerging from the short fiber length is the input power to the fiber of length L. In carrying out this measurement technique, special attenuation must be paid to how optical power is launched into the fiber. This is because, in multimode fiber, different launch conditions (different numerical apertures and spot sizes at the launch end of the fiber) can yield different loss values.
Figure 20: Cutback Technique
2.2.2 Insertion loss method For cables with connectors one cannot use the cutback method. In this case one commonly uses an insertion loss technique. This is less accurate than the cutback method, but is intended for field measurements to give the total attenuation of a cable assembly in decibels. The basic setup is shown in Figure 21,where the launch and detectors couplings are made through connectors. The wavelength tunable light source is coupled to a short length of fiber that has the same basic characteristics as the fiber to be tested. A wavelength selective device, such as an optical filter, is generally included to find the attenuation as a function of wavelength. To carry out the attenuation tests, the connector of the short length launch in fiber is attached to the connector of the receiving system and the launch power level P 1() is recorded. Next, the cable 79
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER80 OPTICS assembly to be tested is connected between the launching and receiving systems, and the received power level P2() is recorded. the attenuation of the cable in decibels is then
A 10 log
P1 ( ) P2 ( )
(4)
This attenuation is the sum of the loss of the cabled fiber and the connector between the launch connector and the cable.
Figure 21: insertion loss technique
2.3 Dispersion Measurements

Three basic forms of dispersion produce pulse broadening of light wave signals in optical fibers, thereby limiting the information carrying capacity. In multimode fibers, Intermodal dispersion arises from the fact that each mode in an optical pulse travels slightly different distance and thus arrives at the fiber end at slightly offset times. Chromatic dispersion stems from the variation in the 80
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER81 OPTICS propagation speed of the individual wavelength components of an optical signal. Polarization mode dispersion arises from splitting of a polarized signal into orthogonal polarization modes, each of which has a different propagation speed. There are many ways to measure the various dispersion effects. Here, we look on some common methods 2.3.1 Intermodal dispersion For pulse dispersion to be negligible in digital systems, one of the approximately equivalent conditions should be satisfied: The fiber transfer function must not roll off to less than 0.5 of its low frequency value for frequencies up to half the desired bit rate. The rms width of the fiber impulse response must be less than one-quarter of the pulse spacing. 2.3.2 Time domain Intermodal dispersion measurements The simplest approach for making pulse dispersion measurements in the time domain is to inject a narrow pulse of optical energy into end of an optical fiber and detect the broadened output pulse at the other end. Figure 22 illustrates a setup for this. Here output pulses from a laser source are coupled through a mode scrambler into a test fiber. The output of the fiber is measured with a sampling oscilloscope that has a built-in optical receiver, or the signal can be detected by external photodetector and then measured with a sampling oscilloscope. Next the shape of the input pulse is measured the same way by replacing the test fiber with a short reference fiber that has a length less than 1 percent of the test fiber length. This reference fiber can be short length cut from the test fiber or it can be a fiber segment that has similar properties. The variable delay in the trigger line is used to offset the difference in delay between the test fiber and the shorter reference fiber. From the output pulse shape, an rms pulse width as defined in the figure 23 can be calculated by:
1)
2)
(t t ) 2 Pout (t )dt
2
Pout (t )dt
(5) 81
t Where the center time of the pulse is determined from
tPout (t )dt t Pout (t )dt
(6)
The evaluation of the equation (6) requires a numerical integration. An easier method is to assume that the output response of a fiber can be approximated by a Gaussian described by 1 t2 Pout (t ) exp( ) 2 2 2 (7) Where the parameter determines the pulse width, as shown in the figure 23.
Figure 22: Time domain Intermodal Dispersion Measurement.
82
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER83 OPTICS Figure 23: Definition of pulse shape parameters. 2.3.3 Frequency-Domain Intermodal Dispersion Measurements Frequency domain Intermodal dispersion measurements yield information on amplitude versusfrequency response and phase versusfrequency response. These data are often more useful for system designers than time domain pulse dispersion measurements, especially if equalization techniques are to be performed on the detected signal at the receiver. The dispersion measurements can be made by sinusoidally modulating a narrowband continuous wave (CW) light signal about a fixed level. The baseband frequency response is then found from the ratio of the sine wave amplitudes at the beginning and end of the fiber. Figure 24 shows an experimental arrangement for finding fiber baseband frequency response. A swept-frequency RF source or a microwave signal source is used to modulate an optical carrier sinsoidally .the optical signal is coupled through a mode scrambler to the test fiber .At the exit end of the fiber, a photo detector measures Pout(f), the output power as a function of the modulation frequency. The input signal is then measured by substituting a short reference fiber for the test fiber, thereby yielding Pin(f). Comparison of the spectrum at the fiber output with the spectrum at the fiber input provides the baseband frequency response H (f) of the fiber under test:
H( f )
Pout ( f ) Pin ( f )
(8)
As the modulation frequency is increased, the optical power level at the fiber output will eventually start to decrease. The fiber bandwidth is defined as the lowest frequency at which H (f) has been reduced to 0.5.
83
Figure 24: Frequency Domain Intermodal Dispersion 2.3.4 Chromatic Dispersion Chromatic dispersion is the primary dispersion mechanism in single mode fibers. Here, we present one method for its measurements. Figure 25 shows a setup for chromatic dispersion measurements by the modulation phase shift method. An electrical signal generator intensity modulates the output of a narrow band, tunable optical source by means of an external modulator. After detecting the transmitted signal with a photodiode receiver. A vector voltmeter is used to measure the phase of the modulation of the received signal relative to the electrical modulation source. The phase measurement is repeated at wavelength intervals across the spectral band of interest. Using the measurements at any two
adjacent wavelengths, the change in-group delay over the wavelength interval between them is
/2 /2
360 f m
10 6
(9)
Where is the wavelength at the center of the interval, fm is the modulation frequency in MHz, and is the phase of the measured modulation in degrees. These data points are then plotted to yield the typical curve shown in Figure 25,the dispersion can be calculated by applying the curve fitting equations to the pulse delay data.
84
Figure 26: Chromatic Dispersion 2.3.5 Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD) At least seven different methods have been developed for measuring PMD. Here, we present only the fixed-analyzer method. In this technique, the mean differential group delay is evaluated statistically from the number of peaks and valleys appearing in the optical power as it is transmitted through the polarizer and scanned as a function of wavelength. Figure 26 shows a simple setup using a spectrum analyzer. A typical spectrum analyzer trace showing the transmitted power level as a function of a wavelength is given in Figure 27. Automatic methods using extrema counting and Fourier analysis are used to extract the PMD information from the measurement data. Using extrema counting the expected value of the differential group delay of the fiber (or of any other device) under test can be calculated from the relationship
pol
kN e 2(
start
start
stop stop
)c
(10)
Where
start
and
stop
are the beginning and the end, respectively, of the wavelength measurement
sweep, Ne represents the number of extrema occurring in the scan, and c is the speed of the light. The dimensionless mode-coupling factor k statistically accounts for the wavelength dependence of the polarization states. The subscript on the (
pol
) terms means that the expected value of the
differential group delay is determined over a wavelength span.
85
Figure 26: Polarization mode Dispersion
Figure 27: typical spectrum analyzer trace showing the transmitted power level As a function of wavelength.
2.4 Eye Patterns

The eye pattern technique is a simple but powerful measurement method .the eye pattern method measurements are made in time domain and allow the effects of waveform distortion to be shown immediately on an oscilloscope. Figure 28 shows the basic equipment setup for making eye-pattern measurements.
86
Figure 28: The basic equipment setup for making eye-pattern measurements The following information can be derived from the eye-pattern: (Note: To interpret the eye pattern, consider the simplified drawing shown in Figure 29. )
Figure 29: Simplified eye diagram showing the key performance parameters Timing jitter (also referred to as edge jitter or phase distortion) in optical fiber system arises from the noise in the receiver and pulse distortion in the optical fiber. If the signal is sampled in the middle of the time interval, then the amount of distortion amount of jitter. Timing jitter is thus given by
T at the threshold level indicates the
1)
Timing jitter (percent)
T 100 % Tb
(11) 87
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER88 OPTICS System rise time, rise time is defined as the time interval between the point where the rising edge of the signal reaches 10 percent of its final amplitude and the time it reaches 90 percent of its final amplitude. The width of the eye opening defines the time interval over which the received signal can be sampled without error from itersymbol interference. The best time to sample the received signal is when the height of the eye opening is largest. This height is reduced as a result of amplitude distortion in the data signal. The vertical distance between the top of the eye opening and the maximum signal level gives the maximum distortion. The more the eye closes, the more difficult it is to distinguish between ones and zeros in the signal. The rate at which the eye closes as the sampling time is varied (i.e. the slope of the eye pattern sides) determines the sensitivity of the system to timing errors .The possibility of timing errors increases as the slope becomes more horizontal. Any nonlinearity of the channel transfer characteristics will create an asymmetry in the eye pattern .if a purely random data stream is passed through a purely linear system, all the eye opening will be identical and symmetrical.
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
Fiber Bundle It is impossible for a single fiber to transmit an image. An individual fiber can transmit only a spot of a certain color and intensity. To transmit an image, a large number of single fibers must be aligned and fused together. This means assembly of optical fibers in which the fibers are ordered in exactly the same way at both ends of the bundle to create an image. This type of fiber bundle is called a coherent bundle or image guide bundle. On the other hand, the assembly of optical fibers that are bundled but not ordered is called an incoherent bundle. Optical fiber which is incapable of producing an image is used in medical endoscopes, boroscopes, and fiberscopes as a light guide. The light guide, as well as the image guide, is essential to construct an image in any optical instrument. Light guides are much less expensive and easy to produce compared to image guides and are designed to maximize light carrying ability rather than high image resolution. Generally, the individual fibers of a light guide are much thicker (about 30 m) than fibers in image guides because resolution is not a factor (Kawahara and Ichikawa, 1987). 88
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER89 OPTICS In an image guide, each fiber core in the bundle captures a portion of the image and delivers it to the other end of the bundle. The amount of image detail (resolving power) depends on the diameter of each fiber core. If the single fiber core of the input side is half black and half white, the output will be gray. Thus, the fiber core should be small enough to discern black and white. Figure 1-5 shows alignment of fibers and images on the distal and proximal face of a coherent fiber bundle. Figure 15(a) shows a low resolution image guide and the transmitted image on the proximal face, while Figure 1-5(b) shows a high resolution image bundle and its image. Since the image guide in Figure 1-5(b) has double the resolution, the triangular image is better seen on the proximal face of the fiber bundle.
Figure 1-5. Alignment of optical fibers and images on the distal and proximal face of image guides. Figure (b) shows two ttimes higher resolution image than that of Figure (a). 2.4 Background to GRIN Fiber Plastic optical fibers have been made for about 40 years. They have always been fabricated with a step index (SI) of refraction and have been used in short distance (less than 100m) fiber optic communications. A cross-section of such a fiber is shown in Figure 1-6. It can be seen that the SI 89
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER90 OPTICS fiber is constructed with a core and cladding with refractive indices n 1 and n2 respectively where n1 > n2. Glass optical fibers are used in most endoscopes and are made with this SI structure. The SI structure can be compared with the GRIN structure which is also shown in Figure 1-6. There are different trajectories of light rays in the two types of fiber. This is shown schematically in Figure 1-7.
Figure 1-6. The structures of the two basic types of optical fiber.
Figure 1-7. The trajectories of typical light rays in SI and GRIN fibers. 90
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER91 OPTICS In SI fibers, the light travels in straight lines. At angles greater than the critical angle of internal reflection, the light is reflected at the core cladding interface. At angles less than the critical angle, the light is refracted into the cladding, from which it emerges into the adjacent fiber in the SI image guide. This small angle light traverses the various fibers in the image guide until it reaches the side of the image guide and is absorbed. In GRIN fibers, the light travels in a curved trajectory, always being refracted back to the axis of the fiber. At angles greater than the critical angle, light never reaches the outer edge of the fiber. At angles less than the critical angle, the light enters the adjacent fiber traverses the guide and is absorbed on the periphery of the guide as in the case of the SI guide.
Topic 2.5 Optical Amplifiers
With the demand for longer transmission lengths, optical amplifiers have become an essential
component in long-haul fiber optic systems. Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs), erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), and Raman optical amplifiers lessen the effects of dispersion and attenuation allowing improved performance of long-haul optical systems.
Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers
Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) are essentially laser diodes, without end mirrors, which
have fiber attached to both ends. They amplify any optical signal that comes from either fiber and transmit an amplified version of the signal out of the second fiber. SOAs are typically constructed in a small package, and they work for 1310 nm and 1550 nm systems. In addition, they transmit bidirectionally, making the reduced size of the device an advantage over regenerators of EDFAs. However, the drawbacks to SOAs include high-coupling loss, polarization dependence, and a higher noise figure. Figure 1 illustrates the basics of a Semiconductor optical amplifier.
91

Figure 1 - Semiconductor Optical Amplifier
Modern
optical
networks
utilize
SOAs
in
the
follow
ways:
Power Boosters: Many tunable laser designs output low optical power levels and must be
immediately followed by an optical amplifier. ( A power booster can use either an SOA or EDFA.)
In-Line
Amplifier:
Allows
signals
to
be
amplified the
within of
the an
signal optical
path. signal.
Wavelength
Conversion:
Involves
changing
wavelength
Receiver Preamplifier: SOAs can be placed in front of detectors to enhance sensitivity.
EDFAs
The explosion of dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) applications make these optical
amplifiers an essential fiber optic system building block. EDFAs allow information to be transmitted over longer distances without the need for conventional repeaters. The fiber is doped with erbium, a rare earth element, that has the appropriate energy levels in their atomic structures for amplifying light. EDFAs are designed to amplify light at 1550 nm. The device utilizes a 980 nm or 1480nm pump laser to inject energy into the doped fiber. When a weak signal at 1310 nm or 1550 nm enters the fiber, the light stimulates the rare earth atoms to release their stored energy as additional 1550 nm or 1310 nm light. This process continues as the signal passes down the fiber, growing stronger and stronger as it goes.
Figure 2 shows a fully featured, dual pump EDFA that includes all of the common components of a
modern EDFA.
Figure 2 - Block Diagram of an EDFA
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The input coupler, Coupler #1, allows the microcontroller to monitor the input light via detector #1.
The input isolator, isolator #1 is almost always present. WDM #1 is always present, and provides a means of injecting the 980 nm pump wavelength into the length of erbium-doped fiber. WDM #1 also allows the optical input signal to be coupled into the erbium-doped fiber with minimal optical loss. The erbium-doped optical fiber is usually tens of meters long. The 980 nm energy pumps the erbium atom into a slowly decaying, excited state. When energy in the 1550 nm band travels through the fiber it causes stimulated emission of radiation, much like in a laser, allowing the 1550 nm signal to gain strength. The erbium fiber has relatively high optical loss, so its length is optimized to provide maximum power output in the desired 1550 nm band. WDM #2 is present only in dual pumped EDFAs. It couples additional 980 nm energy from Pump Laser #2 into the other end of the erbium-doped fiber, increasing gain and output power. Isolator #3 is almost always present. Coupler #2 is optional and may have only one of the two ports shown or may be omitted altogether. The tap that goes to Detector #3 is used to monitor the optical output power. The tap that goes to Detector #2 is used to monitor reflections back into the EDFA. This feature can be used to detect if the connector on the optical output has been disconnected. This increases the backreflected signal, and the microcontrolled can set to disable the pump lasers in this event, providing a measure of safety for technicians working with EDFAs.
Figure 3 shows a two-stage EDFA with mid-stage access. In this case, two single-stage EDFAs are
packaged together. The output of the first stage EDFA and the input of the second stage EDFA are brought out the user. Mid-stage access is important in high performance fiber optic systems. To reduce the overall dispersion of the system, dispersion compensating fiber (DCF) can be used periodically. However, problems can arise from using the DCF, mostly the insertion loss reaching 10 dB. Placing the DCF at the mid-stage access point of the two-stage EDFA reduces detrimental effects on the system, and allows the users noticeable gain. 93

Figure 3 - Two-stage EDFA with Mid-stage Access
The optical input first passes through optical Isolator #1. Next the light passes through WDM #1,
which provides a means of injecting the 980 nm pump wavelength into the first length of erbiumdoped fiber. WDM #1 also allows the optical input signal to be coupled into the erbium-doped fiber with minimal optical loss. The erbium-doped optical fiber is usually tens of meters long. Like the fully feature, dual pumped EDFA, the 980 nm energy pumps the erbium atoms into an excited state that decays slowly. When light in the 1550 nm band travels through the erbium-doped fiber it causes stimulated emission of radiation. As the optical signal gains strength, output of the erbiumdoped fiber then goes into the optical isolator #2, the output of which is available to the user. Typically, a dispersion compensating device will be connected at the mid-stage access point. The light then travels through isolator #3 and WDM #2, which couples additional 980 nm energy from a second pump laser into the other end of a second length of erbium-doped fiber, increasing gain and output power. Finally, the light travels through isolator #4.
Photons amplify the signal avoiding almost all active components, a benefit of EDFAs. Since the
output power of an EDFA can be large, any given system design can require fewer amplifiers. Yet another benefit of EDFAs is the data rate independence means that system upgrades only require changing the launch/receive terminals. The most basic EDFA design amplifies light over a narrow, 12 nm, band. Adding gain equalization filters can increase the band to more than 25 nm. Other exotic doped fibers increase the amplification band to 40 nm.
Because EDFAs greatly enhance system performance, they find use in long-haul, high data rate
fiber optic communication systems and CATV delivery systems. Long-haul systems need amplifiers 94
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER95 OPTICS because of the lengths of fiber used. CATV applications often need to split a signal to several fibers, and EDFAs boost the signal before and after the fiber splits. There are four major applications that generally require optical fiber amplifiers: power amplifier/booster, in-line amplifier, preamplifier or loss compensation for optical networks. Below are detailed description of each application.
Power
Amplifier/Booster
Figure 4 illustrates the first three application for optical amplifiers. Power amplifiers (also referred to
as booster amplifiers) are placed directly after the optical transmitter. This application requires the EDFA to take a large signal input and provide the maximum output level. Small signal response is not as important because the direct transmitter output is usually -10 dBm or higher. The noise added by the amplifier at this point is also not as critical because the incoming signal has a large signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
Figure 4 - Three Applications for an EDFA
In-Line
Amplifiers
In-line amplifiers or in-line repeaters, modify a small input signal and boost it for retransmission
down the fiber. Controlling the small signal performance and noise added by the EDFA reduces the risk of limiting a systems length due to the noise produced by the amplifying components.
Preamplifiers
Past receiver sensitivity of -30 dBm at 622 Mb/s was acceptable; however, presently, the demands
require sensitivity of -40 dBm or -45 dBm. This performance can be achieved by placing an optical amplifier prior to the receiver. Boosting the signal at this point presents a much larger signal into the receiver, thus easing the demands of the receiver design. This application requires careful attention to the noise added by the EDFA; the noise added by the amplifier must be minimal to maximize the received SNR.
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Compensating
for
Loss
in
Optical
Networks
Inserting an EDFA before an 8 x 1 optical splitter increases the power to almost +19 dBm allowing
each of the eight output legs to provide +9 dBm, making the output almost equal to the original transmitter power. The optical splitter alone has a nominal optical insertion loss of 10 dB. The transmitter has an optical output of +10 dBm, meaning that the optical splitter outputs without an EDFA would be 0 dBm. This output power would be acceptable for most digital applications; however, in analog CATV applications this is the minimal acceptable received power. Therefore, inserting the EDFA before the optical splitter greatly increases the output power.
Figure 5 - Loss Compensation in Optical Networks
Wideband
EDFAs
Optical communication systems carrying 100 or more optical wavelengths require and increase in
the bandwidth of the optical amplifier to nearly 80 nm. Normally employing a hybrid optical amplifier, consisting of two separate optical amplifiers, allows for separate amplification, one for the lower 40 nm band and the second for the upper 40 nm band. Figure 6 exemplifies the optical gain spectrum of a hybrid optical amplifier. The solid lines illustrate the response of two individual amplifier sections. The dotted line, which has been increased by 1 dB for clarity, shows the response of the combined hybrid amplifier.
Figure 6 - Optical Gain Spectrum of a Hybrid Optical Amplifier
Raman Optical Amplifiers
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Raman optical amplifiers differ in principle from EDFAs or conventional lasers in that they utilize
stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) to create optical gain. Initially, SRS was considered too detrimental to high channel count DWDM systems. Figure 7 shows the typical transmit spectrum of a six channel DWDM system in the 1550 nm window. Notice that all six wavelengths have approximately the same amplitude.
Figure 7 - DWDM Transmit Spectrum with Six Wavelengths
By applying SRS the wavelengths, it is obvious that the noise background has increased, making
the amplitudes of the six wavelengths different. The lower wavelengths have a smaller amplitude than the upper wavelengths. The SRS effectively robbed energy from the lower wavelength and fed that energy to the upper wavelength.
Figure 8 - Received Spectrum After SRS is on a Long Fiber
A Raman optical amplifier is little more that a high-power pump laser, and a WDM or directional
coupler. The optical amplification occurs in the transmission fiber itself, distributed along the transmission path. Optical signals are amplified up to 10 dB in the network optical fiber. The Raman 97
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER98 OPTICS optical amplifiers have a wide gain bandwidth (up to 10 nm). They can use any installed transmission optical fiber. Consequently, they reduce the effective span loss to improve noise performance by boosting the optical signal in transit. They can be combined with EDFAs to expand optical gain flattened bandwidth.
Figure 9 shows the topology of a typical Raman optical amplifier. The pump laser and circulator
comprise the two key elements of the Raman optical amplifier. The pump laser, in this case, has a wavelength of 1535 nm. The circulator provides a convenient means of injecting light backwards in to the transmission path with minimal optical loss.
Figure 9 - Typical Raman Amplifier Configuration
Figure 10 illustrates the optical spectrum of a forward-pumped Raman optical amplifier. The pump
laser is injected at the transmit end rather than the receive end as shown in Figure 9. The pump laser has a wavelength of 1535 nm; the amplitude is much larger than the data signals.
Figure 10 - Example of Raman Amplifier -- Transmitted Spectrum
As before, applying SRS makes the amplitude of the six data signals much stronger. The energy
from the 1535 nm pump laser is redistributed to the six data signals.
Figure 11 - Example of Raman Amplifier -- Received Spectrum
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Stimulated Brillouin and Stimulated Raman Scattering Raman and Brillouin scattering are inelastic processes in which part of the power is lost from an optical wave and absorbed by the transmission medium. The remaining energy is then re-emitted as a wave of lower frequency. Raman and Brillouin scattering processes can become nonlinear in optical fibres due to the high optical intensity in the core and the long interaction lengths afforded by these waveguides. Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) occur when the light launched into the fibre exceeds a threshold power level for each process. Under the conditions of stimulated scattering, optical power is more efficiently converted from the input pump wave to the scattered Stokes wave.
99
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER100 OPTICS The scattered wave is frequency-shifted from the pump and in the case of SBS propagates in the opposite direction. This means that the amount of optical power leaving the far end of the fibre no longer increases linearly with the input power. The maximum launch power becomes clamped and the excess is simply reflected back out of the fibre. For long distance or highly-branched fibre links, it is important that as much power as possible can be launched into the fibre to compensate for attenuation and power splitting. Limits on the maximum output power due to SBS must therefore be avoided. In SRS, the Stokes wave can be shifted from the pump wave by typically 10 to 100-nm and continues to propagate forwards along the fibre with the pump wave. If the pump is actually one channel of a multi-wavelength WDM communication system, then its Stokes wave may overlap with other channels at longer wavelengths - leading to crosstalk and Raman amplification. Raman amplification causes shorter wavelength channels to experience power depletion and act as a pumps for the amplification of longer wavelength channels. This can skew the power distribution among the WDM channels - reducing the signal-to-noise ratio of the lowest frequency channels and introducing crosstalk on the high frequency channels. Both of these effects can lower the information-carrying capacity of the optical system. A report is available giving the results of a literature survey into techniques for measuring SBS and SRS-related parameters in optical fibre. The aim of the study was to identify the most promising approaches to the development of measurement facilities traceable to national standards. The theory behind each effect is summarised and experimental SBS and SRS data used to illustrate techniques for the determination of the SBS threshold and SRS gain coefficient of fibres.
Cable Link Loss Budget Analysis

Loss budget analysis is the calculation and verification of a fiber optic system's operating characteristics. This encompasses items such as routing, electronics, wavelengths, fiber type, and circuit length. Attenuation and bandwidth are the key parameters for budget loss analysis. Analyze Link Loss In The Design Stage
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Prior to designing or installing a fiber optic system, a loss budget analysis is recommended to make certain the system will work over the proposed link. Both the passive and active components of the circuit have to be included in the budget loss calculation. Passive loss is made up of fiber loss, connector loss, and splice loss. Don't forget any couplers or splitters in the link. Active components are system gain, wavelength, transmitter power, receiver sensitivity, and dynamic range. Prior to system turn up, test the circuit with a source and FO power meter to ensure that it is within the loss budget.
The idea of a loss budget is to insure the network equipment will work over the installed fiber optic link. It is normal to be conservative over the specifications! Don't use the best possible specs for fiber attenuation or connector loss - give yourself some margin!
The best way to illustrate calculating a loss budget is to show how it's done for a 2 km multimode link with 5 connections (2 connectors at each end and 3 connections at patch panels in the link) and one splice in the middle. See the drawings below of the link layout and the instantaneous power in the link at any point along it's length, scaled exactly to the link drawing above it.
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Cable Plant Passive Component Loss Step 1. Fiber loss at the operating wavelength
Cable Length Fiber Type Wavelength (nm) Fiber Atten. dB/km Total Fiber Loss 2.0 Multimode 850 3 [3.5] 6.0 [7.0] 2.0 1300 1 [1.5] 2.0 [3.0] Singlemode 1300 0.4 [1/0.5] 1550 0.3 [1/0.5]
(All specs in brackets are maximum values per EIA/TIA 568 standard. For singlemode fiber, a higher loss is allowed for premises applications. )
Step 2. Connector Loss Multimode connectors will have losses of 0.2-0.5 dB typically. Singlemode connectors, which are factory made and fusion spliced on will have losses of 0.1-0.2 dB. Field
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terminated singlemode connectors may have losses as high as 0.5-1.0 dB. Let's calculate it at both typical and worst case values.
Connector Loss Total # of Connectors Total Connector Loss 0.3 dB (typical 0.75 dB (TIA-568 adhesive/polish conn) max acceptable) 5 1.5 dB 5 3.75 dB
(All connectors are allowed 0.75 max per EIA/TIA 568 standard)
Step 3. Splice Loss Multimode splices are usually made with mechanical splices, although some fusion splicing is used. The larger core and multiple layers make fusion splicing abut the same loss as mechanical splicing, but fusion is more reliable in adverse environments. Figure 0.1-0.5 dB for multimode splices, 0.3 being a good average for an experienced installer. Fusion splicing of singlemode fiber will typically have less than 0.05 dB (that's right, less than a tenth of a dB!)
Typical Splice Loss Total # splices Total Splice Loss 0.3 dB 1 0.3 dB
(All splices are allowed 0.3 max per EIA/TIA 568 standard)
Step 4. Total Passive System Attenuation Add the fiber loss, connector and splice losses to get the link loss.
Best Case 850 nm 1300 nm Total Fiber Loss (dB) Total Connector Loss (dB) Total Splice Loss 7.0 1.5 0.3 2.0 1.5 0.3 TIA 568 Max 850 nm 1300 nm 7.0 3.75 0.3 3.0 3.75 0.3 103
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER104 OPTICS (dB) Other (dB) 0 Total Link Loss (dB) 8.8 0 3.8 0 11.05 0 7.05
Remember these should be the criteria for testing. Allow +/- 0.2 -0.5 dB for measurement uncertainty and that becomes your pass/fail criterion.
Equipment Link Loss Budget Calculation: Link loss budget for network hardware depends on the dynamic range, the difference between the sensitivity of the receiver and the output of the source into the fiber. You need some margin for system degradation over time or environment, so subtract that margin (as much as 3dB) to get the loss budget for the link. Step 5. Data From Manufacturer's Specification for Active Components (Typical 100 Mb/s link)
Operating Wavelength (nm) Fiber Type Receiver Sens. (dBm@ required BER) Average Transmitter Output (dBm) Dynamic Range (dB) Recommended Excess Margin (dB) 1300 MM -31 -16 15 3
Step 6. Loss Margin Calculation

Dynamic Range (dB) (above) Cable Plant Link Loss (dB) Link Loss Margin (dB) 15 15 7.05 3.8 (Typ) (TIA) 11.2 7.95
As a general rule, the Link Loss Margin should be greater than approximately 3 dB to allow for link degradation over time. LEDs in the transmitter may age and lose power, connectors or splices may degrade or connectors may get dirty if opened for rerouting or
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testing. If cables are accidentally cut, excess margin will be needed to accommodate splices for restoration.
Soliton Pulses There is a new fiber optic data transmission scheme that utilizes something called Soliton Pulses. These are very short bursts of light generated in an Erbium-doped Fiber LASER. Soliton light can be used to transmit data at rates in excess of 50 Gb/s, at distances over 19,000 km of DispersionShifted Fiber, requiring no repeaters, and with no errors. This data rate is the equivalent of sending 6,200 bibles per second. At this rate, one bible could be sent to everyone on earth--5.5 9 people--in about 10 days. In the case of repeaters, in a long-haul fiber: instead of converting the light into electrical signals, amplifying, correcting errors, retiming and retransmitting light pulses, an optical amplifier is used. It consists of about 30 meters of Erbium-doped fiber, assorted filters and beam splitters, and pumped by a 15 mW LASER diode operating at 1550 nm. This arrangement adds about 30 dB of gain with no appreciable noise. Also, the bandwidth of this amplifier is on the order of 40 THz. At this rate, one bible could be sent to everyone on earth, 5.5 9 people, in about 18 minutes. The Shortest LASER pulse, to date, is ~10 Femtoseconds (10 years. A Soliton Pulse is: a pulse of light--of sufficient intensity and correct wavelength --traveling down a special non-linear optical fiber known as, Dispersion-Shifted Fiber, is classified as a Soliton Pulse. This Soliton light pulse exhibits a unique characteristic of getting shorter--not longer, as conventional wisdom would dictate. Due to the non-linearly of the fiber in the presents of light exceeding some quantum threshold of intensity--the leading edge of the pulse is being overtaken by the faster trailing edge. That is, the leading edge of the light is undergoing a Doppler Red-Shift, while the trailing edge is experiencing a Doppler Blue-Shift. The result of this effect is a shortening of the pulse duration, with a corresponding increasing Peak Power. As the pulse looses energy (joules) over distance, it increases in Peak power--thus insuring itself's staying above the peak threshold of the fiber needed for the phenomenon in the first place! The Dichotomy of Soliton Pulses in Dispersion-Shifted Fiber 105
-15
sec). Light would travel 1/8th the
thickness of a sheet of paper in that time. 10 Fsec is to one second as one second is to 3.2 million
Starting Out
Midway
Destination
In normal Dispersive finite bandwidth media, the greater the Distance traveled, there is a Spreading of the pulse width, i.e., Signal Bandwidth is reduced (resulting in Inter-symbol Interference). However, the opposite is true with Soliton pulses in Dispersion-Shifted Fiber. As can be seen in the above figure, the leading edge of the light pulse is undergoing a Doppler Red-Shift, while the trailing edge is experiencing a Doppler Blue-Shift, narrowing the pulse; which Spreads the Bandwidth and Increases the Peak Power. Even though Average Power is Decreasing, the narrowing pulse forces the Peak Power to Increase--assuring the continued operation in the Nonlinear region of the Dispersion-Shifted Fiber.
The Dichotomy of Soliton Pulses in Dispersion-Shifted Fiber
Conventional Fiber Communications 1.7 GBit/sec
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ight to Electronic] [Electronic to Light] (1800cu ft.) Repeaters spaced ~ 20 km in Dispersion-Shifted 19,000 Fiber Communications, km 25 Gbit/sec -->
oliton Pulses -With No Errors
ptical/Light Amplifier Repeaters (0.5cu ft.) spaced ~ 30 km - 100 km 50 Gbit/sec 19,000 No km Repeaters Needed -->
-With No Errors
Through the Air LASER Communications Space

based, as well as, terrestrial based LASER communications, the LASER light is first
expanded and sent as a "focused" beam or cone to the destination target or receiver. Think of it as a way of "looking" around rain drops, dust particles, etc.
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LASER Transmitter using Cassagrainian Optics

For reliable communications the LASER beam should be first spread and made focusable on the destination receiver's optics. This spread beam is significantly more difficult to block or obscure than a thin collimated LASER beam.
LASER Receiver using a Refractor Telescope
Ideally the receiving telescope should be designed with the magnification for "seeing" the LASER light cone only. If the telescope's eyepiece projected image has other than the LASER light the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) will degrade. However, in the real world of particulate laden air and temperature gradient induced path distortions, the receiving telescope must be a compromise that allows for these impairments.
108

Finally, proper implementation of the optical bandpass filter can insure good SNR and reduce interference.
optical receiver The basic optical receiver converts the modulated light coming from the optical fiber back into a replica of the original signal applied to the transmitter. The detector of this modulated light is usually a photodiode of either the PIN or the Avalanche type. This detector is mounted in a connector similar to the one used for the LED or LD. Photodiodes usually have a large sensitive detecting area that can be several hundred microns in diameter. This relaxes the need for special precautions in centering the fiber in the receiving connector and makes the "alignment" concern much less critical than it is in optical transmitters. Since the amount of light that exits a fiber is quite small, optical receivers usually employ high gain internal amplifiers. Because of this, optical receivers can be easily overloaded. For this reason, it is important only to the size fiber specified for use with a given system. If, for example, a transmitter/receiver pair designed for use with single-mode fiber were used with multimode fiber, the large amount of light present at the output of the fiber (due to over-coupling at the light source) would overload the receiver and cause a severely distorted output signal. Similarly, if a transmitter/receiver pair designed for use with multimode fiber were used with single-mode fiber, not enough light would reach the receiver, resulting in either an excessively noisy output signal or no signal at all. The only time any sort of receiver "mismatching" might be considered is when there is so much excessive loss in the fiber that the extra 5 to 15 dB of light coupled into a multimode fiber by a single-mode light source is the only chance to achieve proper operation. However, this is an extreme case and is not normally recommended. As in the case of transmitters, optical receivers are available in both analog and digital versions. Both types usually employ an analog preamplifier stage, followed by either an analog or digital output stage (depending on the type of receiver). Figure 10 is a functional diagram of a simple analog optical receiver. The first stage is an operational amplifier connected as a current-to-voltage converter. This stage takes the tiny current from the photodiode and converts it into a voltage, usually in the millivolt 109
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER110 OPTICS range. The next stage is a simple operational voltage amplifier. Here the signal is raised to the desired output level. current from the photodiode and converts it into a voltage, usually in the millivolt range. The next stage is a simple operational voltage amplifier. Here the signal is raised to the desired output level.
1.
Figure 11 is a functional diagram of a simple digital optical receiver. As in the case of the analog receiver, the first stage is a current-to-voltage converter. The output of this stage, however, is fed to a voltage comparator, which produces a clean, fast rise-time digital output signal. The trigger level adjustment, when it is present, is used to "touch up" the point on the analog signal where the comparator switches. This allows the symmetry of the recovered digital signal to be trimmed as accurately as desired. Additional stages are often added to both analog and digital receivers to provide drivers for coaxial cables, protocol converters or a host of other functions in efforts to reproduce the original signal as accurately as possible. It is important to note that while fiber optic cable is immune to all forms of interference, the electronic receiver is not. Because of this, normal precautions, such as shielding and grounding,
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Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER111 OPTICS should be taken when using fiber optic electronic components.
Designing A Fiber Optic System
When designing a fiber optic system, there are many factors that must be considered - all of which contribute to the final goal of ensuring that enough light reaches the receiver. Without the right amount of light, the entire system will not operate properly. Figure 12 identifies many of these factors and considerations.
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The following step-by-step procedure should be followed when designing any system.
1.
Determine the correct optical transmitter and receiver combination based upon the signal to be transmitted (Analog, Digital, Audio, Video, RS-232, RS-422, RS-485, etc.). Determine the operating power available (AC, DC, etc.). Determine the special modifications (if any) necessary (Impedances, Bandwidths, Special Connectors, Fiber Size, etc.). Calculate the total optical loss (in dB) in the system by adding the cable loss, splice loss, and connector loss. These parameters should be available from the manufacturer of the electronics and fiber. Compare the loss figure obtained with the allowable optical loss budget of the receiver. Be certain to add a safety margin factor of at least 3 dB to the entire system. Check that the fiber bandwidth is adequate to pass the signal desired. If, after performing the above calculations, it is discovered that the fiber bandwidth is inadequate for transmitting the required signal the necessary distance, it will be necessary either to select a different transmitter/receiver (wavelength) combination, or consider the use of a lower loss premium fiber.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Four-Wave Mixing and its Applications

C. W. Thiel
The process of four-wave mixing is discussed. The theoretical basis of FWM is developed followed by an examination of common experimental methods based upon FWM processes. Some of the applications and uses of FWM are presented.
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Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER113 OPTICS Key Words: Four-Wave Mixing, Coherent Raman Processes
Introduction
The field of nonlinear optics1, 2, 3 was ushered in with the development of the first laser by Maimen4 in 1960. Although nonlinear optical effects had been known as early as the nineteenth century (The Pockels and Kerr effects), only DC fields could be produced with enough intensity to reach the regime of nonlinear optical response. Due to this deficiency, nonlinear optics remained unexplored until the classic experiment by Franken and co-workers5 in which second-harmonic generation was demonstrated in quartz with the use of a ruby laser. With a readily available source of coherent optical radiation that exhibited nearly monochromatic characteristics, reports of new phenomena quickly became common in the professional literature. Among the first of these were observations of two-photon absorption by Kaiser and Garrett,6 stimulated Raman scattering by Ng and Woodbury,7 third-harmonic generation by Maker and co-workers,8 and anti-Stokes frequency mixing by Terhune and co-workers.9 Soon after the first observations of optical nonlinearities were made, a theoretical explanation was provided based upon the nonlinear response of electron oscillators in the atomic Coulomb field. The field of nonlinear optics has continued to grow at a tremendous rate since its inception in 1961 and has proven to be a nearly inexhaustible source of new phenomena and optical techniques. The particular areas of nonlinear optics which will be explored in this paper are the phenomena arising from the interaction of four coherent optical fields through the third order nonlinear susceptibility. An indication of the importance that the scientific community places on this topic was given in 1981 when Nicholaas Bloembergen and Arthur Schawlow received the Nobel Prize in physics for their work in this field.10 This field includes many diverse processes such as degenerate four-wave mixing, stimulated Raman scattering, and Raman induced Kerr effects. These processes have proven to be of utility in a great number of applications including optical processing, phase conjugate optics, real-time holography, and the measurement of atomic energy structures and decay rates. This paper will examine the basic theory of coherent third order nonlinear
113
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER OPTICS
processes, the most common of the nonlinear techniques employed, and some of the applications of these techniques.
Theory
The concept of three electromagnetic fields interacting to produce a fourth field is central to the description of all four-wave mixing processes. Physically, we may understand this process by considering the individual interactions of the fields within a dielectric medium. The first input field causes an oscillating polarization in the dielectric which re-radiates with some phase shift determined by the damping of the individual dipoles; this is just traditional Rayleigh scattering described by linear optics. The application of a second field will also drive the polarization of the dielectric, and the interference of the two waves will cause harmonics in the polarization at the sum and difference frequencies. Now, application of a third field will also drive the polarization, and this will beat with both the other input fields as well as the sum and difference frequencies. This beating with the sum and difference frequencies is what gives rise to the fourth field in four-wave mixing. Since each of the beat frequencies produced can also act as new source fields, a bewildering number of interactions and fields may be produced from this basic process. A mathematical model of a systems ability to support the various mixing processes is needed in order to explain the observed four-wave mixing phenomena. The traditional method of modeling an optical materials nonlinear response is to expand the induced polarization as a power series in the electric field strength.11, 12, 13 ! (1) The expansion coefficients are known as susceptibilities in analogy to classical linear electromagnetic theory. This method assumes that the higher order susceptibilities grow progressively smaller so that the power series exansion converges to a finite polarization. This will be the case when the Rabi frequency is small compared to the homogeneous linewidths of any material resonances near the fields frequencies.12 This is true for most of the cases of interest, although important processes such as self-induced transparency occur when this condition is violated. In general, the susceptibilities are tensor objects that relate the different fields directions and frequencies to the direction and strength of the induced polarization. The lowest order nonlinear susceptibility (2) is a third rank tensor that has 27 elements. Many of these elements are determined by the symmetry of the optical medium which it describes,11 and all the elements vanish in materials with inversion symmetry (such as gases and liquids). The third order nonlinear susceptibility (3) is responsible for four-wave mixing processes.14 In general, (3) is a fourth rank tensor with 81 elements,15 and each of these elements consists of a sum of 48 terms. This staggering number of terms is drastically reduced through material symmetries and resonance, but unlike (2),
114
Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER OPTICS may have nonzero elements for any symmetry. Explicit expressions for the terms have been
(3)
published,16 and each term has a typical form with three resonant factors in the denominator(2) The summation in (2) is taken over all states of the oscillator, and N is the oscillator density, gk is the electric dipole matrix element between states g and k, kg is the frequency of the transition from g to k, kg is the damping of the off-diagonal element of the density matrix that connects g to k, and 1,2,3 are the frequencies of the fields. The tensor properties of the susceptibility are derived from the vector properties of the dipole matrix elements in (2). The primary difference between the 48 terms is the ordering of the frequencies involved in the summation. A method of using diagrammatic representations for these terms in calculating perturbations to the density matrix has been suggested by Yee et. al.17 (similar to Feynman diagrams in particle physics). The susceptibility is usually simplified further by only considering terms which have small factors in the denominators due to resonance with oscillator frequencies.18 For example, Raman processes are described by the terms which contain 1- 2 and 3- 2, while twophoton absorption is described by terms that contain 1+ 3. In order to understand the four-wave mixing process, a closer examination of the third order nonlinear polarization must be made. The general form of the polarization may be written as shown in (3). This nonlinearity describes a coupling between four waves, each with its own direction of propagation , polarization, and frequency. This expression for the polarization immediately gives insight into the nature of measured four-wave mixing signals. Since the physical quantity that is measured by experiment is the field intensity, the observed signal will be proportional to | (3)|2, the product of the three field intensities, and a phase matching factor. This functional dependence is often used as a quick method of verifying that an observed signal is actually due to a third order mixing effect. Now, if this nonlinear polarization is substituted into Maxwells equations, a set of four coupled wave equations may be found for the fields. The form of the equations is simplified by defining nonlinear scalar coupling coefficients and a wave vector mismatch,14
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where ei is the polarization vector of the ith field. The equations for the field magnitudes may now be written in the following form (using the slowly varying envelope approximation).
In most of the common four-wave mixing processes, these equations are simplified since some of the frequencies, wave vectors, and polarizations are degenerate. The equations in (5) cannot be solved in general, so the usual approach taken is to assume plane wave solutions and that the energy transferred from the input fields to the fourth field is a negligible fraction of the total energy of the fields. With these assumptions, we may decouple the equations (5) and solve for the four fields. This gives the equations (6) for the field intensities,19
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Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER OPTICS re i is the absorption coefficient at i, L is the effective length of overlap of the four fields, and G( kL) is the phase matching factor. The reduction of equations for the input fields to the Beer-Lambert law is a direct consequence of the assumption of negligible energy transfer to the output field. Notice that the phase matching factor (7) reduces to the familiar form sinc2( kL) when there is no absorption of the fields.
The assumption of plane wave solutions limits the validity of (6) since the fields used experimentally are invariably Gaussian.20 In order to apply this theory to Gaussian beams, the interaction length must be much smaller than the Rayleigh range so that phase fronts may be approximated as planar. Modifications of the theory due to focusing effects have been calculated by Bjorklund21 for the case of isotropic media.. Efficient coupling between the four waves described by (6) may only occur when ! ! ! ! 1 2 3 , and 4 1 2 3 4 Another equivalent way of understanding these conditions is by realizing that since the energy transfer is a coherent process, all four waves must maintain a constant phase relative to the others in order to avoid any destructive interference. These constraints are embodied in the phase matching factor of equation (7). G( kL) only has an appreciable magnitude near kL=0; thus, the output field is completely decoupled from the input fields for large phase mismatches. kL=0 may be achieved by either having a very short overlap length, or choosing a small wave vector mismatch. Phase matching22 is the process of choosing the directions, and polarizations in birefringent media, in order to eliminate the wave vector mismatch. Figure 1 is a pictorial representation of the wave vector mismatch: situation (a) shows a finite wave vector mismatch, while (b) demonstrates the corresponding phase matched case. The constraints imposed by phase matching are responsible for the highly directional nature of the signals produced by fourwave mixing and the ease of spatially separating the output fields. Phase matching may also be used as a spectral filter since only a very narrow frequency band may be phase matched along a particular direction.13
Figure 1. (from reference [13]) This is a typical CARS phase matching diagram where (a) displays a wave vector mismatch of k, and (b) is the perfectly phase matched case.
117
Four-Wave Mixing Processes

Now that the basic theory of four-wave mixing has been presented, examination should be made of the most common four-wave mixing processes used in experimental science. These processes are summarized in table 1 and figure 10. CARS-Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Spectroscopy Coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy is the most common of all the fourwave mixing processes. The CARS process involves the input of two fields of frequencies 1 and 2 ( 1> 2). Two photons of frequency 1 interact with a single photon of frequency 2 to create an output field with a frequency of s=2 1 - 2. In this process, the two input frequencies are chosen so that 1 - 2 is near a transition of the dielectric mediumthis is a coherent version of Raman scattering. This process is represented by situation (b) in figure 2. Since there are only two input beams, phase matching is achieved through selection of the relative angle and polarization of the two beams as in (b) of figure 3. The primary advantage of CARS is the large signal produced.15 Due to the efficient transfer of energy to the signal field and the directional nature of the coherent beams, CARS may be as much as a billion times more sensitive than spontaneous Raman scattering (COORS). The main disadvantage of CARS is the inevitable contributions to the signal from the non-resonant terms in equation (2). These effects can cause a variable background signal that obscures the resonant signal. The non-resonant terms may also interfere with the resonant terms causing the observed lineshapes to be distorted from their true shapes. A diagram of a typical CARS experimental setup is given in figure 4.
Figure 2. (from reference [15]) Pictorial representation of photon interactions. (a) The spontaneous scattering mechanism giving rise to conventional old-fashioned ordinary Raman spectroscopy (COORS). (b) The process in coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS); this would represent coherent Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CSRS) if 1< 2. (c) The process in stimulated Raman gain spectroscopy (SRS), the inverse Raman effect
118

(TIRE), and Raman-induced Kerr effect (RIKE). (d) General four-wave mixing.
Figure 3. (from reference [3]) Typical phase matching geometries for various four-wave mixing processes. (a) General four-wave mixing (often referred to as BOXCARS). (b) CARS or CSRS (referred to as folded BOXCARS or ARCS). (c) Degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM). (d) Two-photon absorption (TPA).
Figure 4. (from reference [23]) Typical CARS apparatus at Oregon State University
119
Figure 5. (from reference [24]) Experimental apparatus for performing high-resolution SRS with cw lasers
CSRS-Coherent Stokes Raman Spectroscopy Coherent Stokes Raman Spectroscopy (CSRSpronounced scissors) is the same as CARS except with 1< 2: the output is at the Stokes frequency. SRS-Stimulated Raman Gain Spectroscopy Modern techniques of SRS employ stable cw probe lasers to detect the small changes (1 part in a million) in intensity due to a Raman gain induced by a second pump laser.25 This process is represented by (c) of figure 2. This technique relies on the resonant enhancement of the coupling of the pump field to the probe field as the difference in frequencies between the two fields approaches a transition of the material. This coupling causes a gain in the probe beam which may then be detected with a photodiode. The advantages of this process are that it is insensitive to the non-resonant background signal present in CARS, the observed signal is linearly proportional to the Raman scattering cross section, and it is also insensitive to depolarization of the fields. An additional advantage of SRS is the automatic fulfillment of phase matching due to the double degeneracy of the mixing frequencies. The main disadvantages of SRS is that it requires an extremely stable cw probe laser in order to obtain high-resolution spectra, and the observed signal gain may be complicated due to fluorescence or hot luminescence. An example of a SRS Raman spectrometer is shown in figure 5.
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Figure 6. (from reference [26]) Depiction of Raman absorption and emission spectra obtained by TIRES. The central peak represents the laser source and the smooth lamp spectrum is shown superimposed on the absorption diagram. The two observed peaks correspond detection of a single Raman resonance by both Stokes and anti-Stokes emission or absorption.
TIRES-The Inverse Raman Effect Spectroscopy The inverse Raman effect is an alternate method of detecting the presence of pump induced Raman gain that was first used by Jones and Stoicheff in 1964.26 The most common method of TIRES uses a laser and an intense broadband source as a probe. The laser plays the same role that the probe beam plays in SRS, while the broadband source acts as the pump. The frequencies of the broadband source that differ from the laser frequency by a material resonance will couple to the laser producing Raman gain. This coupling of energy into the laser field will cause an apparent loss at the resonant frequencies in the broadband sources spectrum. This process is depicted in figure 6. The main advantages of this method over SRS are that it may be used to obtain an entire Raman spectrum at once, and it avoids many of the problems due to the background Raman fluorescence present in other techniques. RIKES-Raman Induced Kerr Effect Spectroscopy The use of an intense electric field to induce birefringence in a medium has been known since the middle of the nineteenth century: the optical Kerr effect. Four-wave mixing also has the potential to induce a birefringence in a material, and this is the basis for RIKES.27 When a four-wave mixing process is resonant with a Raman transition, such as in SRS, the strong interaction induces a birefringence in the medium, and thus causes the polarizations of the input fields to be altered. This process may be predicted from the tensor properties of the third-order susceptibility; in general, the induced polarization will have a component perpendicular to the polarization of the input field. This can be detected with great sensitivity by measuring the transmission through crossed polarizers. The main disadvantage of RIKES is that it is sensitive to stress induced
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Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER OPTICS birefringence in the medium. A typical RIKES apparatus is diagrammed in figure 7.
Figure 7. (from reference [27]) Typical RIKES experimental setup.
Figure 8. (from reference [19]) An examination of the 5D4 1 state of LiTbF4 using FWM. (a) Four-wave mixing signal, and (b) single-photon absorption signal. The observed narrowing of the FWM signal is due to the frequency selectivity of the phase matching condition.
FWM-Four-Wave Mixing The term four-wave mixing is usually reserved for the interaction of four spatially or spectrally distinct fields. FWM reduces to the previously discussed processes when two or more of the frequencies are degenerate. FWM may be used to probe either one-photon resonances or two-photon resonances in a material by measuring the resonant enhancement as one or more of the frequencies are tuned. By tuning the frequencies to multiple resonances in the material, excited state cross sections, lifetimes, and linewidths may be measured.18, 19 Another unique advantage of FWM is that Raman cross sections
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may be directly compared by tuning the two difference frequencies to the two Raman transitions of interest ( 1- 2 and 3- 2). FWM also has the advantage of eliminating the non-resonant background signals present in the other methods. The main disadvantage of FWM is the complications involved in simultaneously overlapping three coherent beams while maintaining the phase matching condition (BOXCARS). Experimental data obtained through FWM are shown in figure 8 and figure 9.
Figure 9. (from reference [28]) Two-dimensional plot of the dispersion of | (3)1111|2 versus the two difference frequencies in a 1:1 mixture of benzene and cyclohexane. The heavy lines show data obtained by FWM and path VI corresponds to CARS. The ratio of the Raman cross sections of benzene and cyclohexane was determined from such plots to be 3.45:1.
Laser at
2
(3) Material 2 1- 2 (CARS)
Laser at
1
(TIRES)
2
(SRS, RIKES) 2 2- 1 (CSRS)
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Figure 10. Diagram of coherent Raman processes and the relative orientation of output signals detected in the different methods of Raman spectroscopy ( 1> 2 and 1- 2 is near a Raman resonance).
Table 1. Spectroscopic Applications of Four-Wave Mixing Nonlinear Interaction Sum frequency mixing 4=2 1+ 2 Third-harmonic generation 4=3 1 Difference frequency mixing (CARS) 4=2 1- 2 Four-wave mixing (FWM) 4= 1+ 2- 3 Raman-induced Kerr effect (RIKE) 2= 1+ 2- 1 Raman gain spectroscopy (SRS) 2= 1+ 2- 1 The inverse Raman effect spectroscopy (TIRES) 2= 1+ 2- 1
1
Quantity Varied
2
Quantity Measured Intensity at 4 structure near
Information Obtained Energy level
Intensity at 4 2 1with same parity as ground state Intensity at 4 levels, susceptibilities, lifetimes, etc.
3 3
Energy levels near
Raman energy
2-
Intensity at 4 susceptibilities, lifetimes, etc. Polarization changes at 2 lifetimes, etc. Gain at

2
Raman levels,
Raman levels, susceptibilities,
Raman levels
Loss at
Raman levels
Applications
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Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER OPTICS In this section, some of the many applications of the four-wave mixing processes will be discussed. Phase-Conjugation Phase-conjugation is the name given to the process of reversing the phase development of an electromagnetic wave.11, 29 This is equivalent to reversing the relative signs of the spatial and temporal development of the wave. A phase-conjugated wave would appear to travel backward in time. The usefulness of this process arises when a wave is distorted by traveling through an inhomogeneous medium. If the distorted wave could be phase-conjugated, the progress of the phases introduced by the medium would be reversed, and thus the wave would develop back to its original undistorted state. Four-wave mixing is one method of producing a phase-conjugate of an incoming wave. If we consider equations (5) and (6), and the situation shown in (a) of figure 11, we realize that the field E4 will be the phase conjugate of E3 if E1 and E2 are plane waves (they contain no spatial information) and if all of the waves are the same frequency (degenerate FWM). Thus, by using two counterpropagating pump beams and satisfying the phase matching condition, the nonlinear medium may be used as a phase-conjugate reflector. This method may also be used to remove individual distortions by replacing the pump waves with phase distorted plane waves.30 The use of the distorted reference waves allows the phase distortion to be selectively erased. One application of the FWM phase-conjugate reflector is as an intra-cavity element of a laser system. By using a phase-conjugate mirror as the rear-reflector in a laser cavity, any distortions introduced during the lasing process may be removed as they re-traverse the cavity. The success of this process is shown in figure 12.
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Figure 11. (from reference [11]) (a) The conventional geometry of phase conjugation through FWM. (b) Beams 2 and 4 interfere to form an index grating A2A4*. Beam 1 is Bragg-diffracted from the grating to yield the output phase-conjugate of A4 (which is A3). (c) Beams 1 and 4 interfere to form an index grating A1A4*. Beam 2 is Bragg-diffracted from the grating to yield the output phaseconjugate of A4 (which is A3). FWM phase-conjugate reflector may be simplified even further through the
use of a photorefractive crystal. In this scheme of phase conjugation, the input wave is scattered in the crystal and then internally reflected by crystal faces cut at the phase matching angle. These reflected waves then acts as the pump waves for FWM; the crystal acts as a self-pumped phase-conjugate reflector.31, 32 The use of a photorefractive material greatly enhances the self-pumping since its refractive index is more easily modulated by the interfering fields, thus enhancing the diffraction into the pump field. An excellent example of the performance of a self-pumped phase conjugate mirror is shown in figure 13. Real-time Holographic Imaging Degenerate FWM may also be used for real-time holographic imaging.34, 35 The analogy between FWM and holography may be understood from figure 11. In either (b) or (c), it is shown that the interference of two of the waves act to form a real-time grating in the optical medium. This index grating may be viewed as an intensity dependent modulation of the susceptibility (and thus the index of refraction) due to the nonlinear interaction between the fields and the dielectric medium. The third wave is then Braggdiffracted from this grating to produce the fourth wave. Thus, just as in traditional holography, both the spatial and phase information of an input beam reflected from an object is stored in the interference pattern. This information may then be used to reconstruct the original wave by diffracting the third wave from the interference pattern.
Figure 12. (from reference [33]) (a) An argon laser gain tube with a distortion D, a phase-conjugating crystal C, and a feedback mirror M2. (b) The highly degraded output beam from M3 when a conventional mirror is used as the rear-reflector. (c) The beam regains its diffraction-limited shape in the presence of the distortion when the phase-conjugate reflector is used.
126
Figure 13. (from reference [31]) An example of the distortion removing capabilities of the self-pumped phase-conjugate mirror.
Real-time Image Processing Another technique which utilizes the analogy between holography and FWM is real-time image processing.36 The concepts of Fourier optics predict that if an image is passed through a lens, the Fourier transform of the image will be formed in the focal plane of the lens. If a nonlinear medium is placed in the focal plane of a lens, and three waves containing spatial information are focused through the lens, an induced polarization given by equation (3) will radiate a fourth wave which will be proportional to the product of the Fourier transforms of the original waves. Now, if this fourth wave is passed back through the lens, the spatial variation of the resulting wave (in the focal plane) will be the inverse Fourier transform of the product of the Fourier transforms of the input waves. Therefore, from basic Fourier analysis we know that the output wave will be the convolution of two of the waves correlated with the third (this is because one wave enters as a complex conjugate in the polarization). By choosing one of the waves to have a simple Fourier transform, either spatial correlations or convolutions may be performed instantly. Figure 14 is an example of correlations and convolutions performed using this method.37
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Figure 14. columns
(from reference [37]) An example processing using FWM. The first three are the input waves. The last column is the convolution of the first two correlated with the third.
Generation of Coherent Sources in the VUV and IR FWM and the related Raman processes may be used as methods for producing coherent light sources in the extreme regions of the spectrum. Fourwave mixing with a resonant Raman transition is commonly used to transfer energy from a tunable dye laser into the Stokes wave, thus producing a tunable source of coherent IR radiation. Thirdharmonic generation is also a special case of degenerate FWM which is used to produce a tunable source of coherent radiation in the VUV region of the spectrum.38 Measurement of Excited State Lifetimes and Dephasing Rates A very useful spectroscopic application of four-wave mixing is the measurement of lifetimes and dephasing rates. One method for doing this
128
involves temporally separating the three input beams and measuring the resulting output (timeresolved CARS). A FWM output may only occur if the atomic states interacting with the applied fields maintain their coherence, thus the dephasing rate may be determined. A second method of determining homogeneous dephasing rates relies on the spectral selectivity of the phase matching condition. If the interaction length of the FWM process is increased, k must become smaller in order to effectively couple the input fields to the output field; thus, by choosing a large enough L, the spectral width of the FWM signal should reduce to the homogeneous linewidth limit. An additional method of simultaneously determining both the natural lifetime and the dephasing rate using FWM has been suggested by Yajima and Souma.39 This method observes the output signal as the two difference frequencies are tuned through a material resonance. This technique has successfully been used to measure picosecond relaxation times.
Conclusion
Only a small portion of the field of four-wave mixing was sampled in this paper due to the plethora of applications that have been found for its many different manifestations. The purpose of this paper was to convey the essence of the complicated process of four-wave mixing so that the reader may gain a conceptual understanding of the many important applications that have been made of this process. This is a dynamic field that will undoubtedly continue to grow well into the future.
129
REFERENCES
[1] Fiber Optics and the Telecommunication Explosion, Norma Thorsen, Prentice Hall Inc., N.J. USA, 1998 [2] [3] Fiber Optics Communications, Joseph C. Palais, Prentice Hall Inc., NJ USA 1988 Introduction to Fiber Optics, Ajoy Ghatak & K. Thayagarajan
[4] A Brief History of Fiber Optic Technology, David R. Goff. Fiber Optic Reference Guide, 3rd ed,. Massachusetts, 2002.2002. [5] [6] http://www.fiber-optics.info http://www.williamson-labs.com/com-optical.htm#conventional
SUGGESTED READING MATERIAL FOR FURTHER READING

[1] Introduction to Fiber Optics, 3rd Edition, John Crisp & Barry Elliott National Centre for
[2] Fiber Optics Communications, James N. Downing, Telecommunications Technologies, THOMSON (Delmar Learning) [3]
Practical Fiber Optics, David Bailey & Edwin Wright, Newness (ELSEVEIR)
[4]
[5] [6]
http://www.weedinstrument.com/product_groups/fiber/1.html
http://www.commspecial.com/index.html http://www.sff.net/people/jeff.hecht/index.html
130
MCQs 1. In which year John Tyndall demonstrated that light used internal reflection to follow a specific path a. 1860 b. 1865 c. 1870 d. 1900 2. Laser beam technology is used for a. terminals b. keyboards c. optical disks d. magnetic tape 3 _____________ is the medium that is least susceptible to noise a. twisted pair b. Optical Fiber c. microwave d. cellular 4 Microwave transmission, coaxial cables, and optical fiber are examples of a. modems b. routers c. communication media d. ring networks 5. Scaterring in fiber optics occur when. a. when atoms or other particles within the fiber spread the light b. when the light beam is partially absorbed by lingering materials, namely water and metal ions c. When the core has the maximum refractive index d. When a ray will propagate inside the core by a series of internal reflections 6. Single Mode Fiber with a relatively narrow diameter, through which only propagate typically at a. 1310 or 1550nm b. 1013 or 1500 nm c. 1000 or 1670 nm d. 1400 or 1600 nm one mode will
131
7. Optical Fiber Cables are Spliced with the following chord which are terminated to the ODF FC-PC coupler a. FC-PC to FC-SC b. FC-PC to FC-ST c. Pigtails FC-PC to FC-PC
132

Fiber Optics

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Fiber Optics

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Fiber Optics

Compiled By: IMRAN MIR

(COURSE MATERIAL FOR DEPARTMENTAL PROMOTION EXAMS)

HISTORY OF FIBER OPTICS

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Figure 1.2 Optical Fiber with Cladding

1.4 THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AND BEYOND

Figure 1.5 - The Growth of Optical Fiber Transmission Capacity

2. PRINCIPLES OF FIBER OPTICS

If angle 1 is increased to c, 2 reaches 90. The critical angle, c, is defined as:

Figure 2-2. Paths of Light Rays in a Step Index Fiber

2.3 Attenuation in Fiber OpticsFIBER23 OPTICS

2.3 Attenuation in Fiber OpticsFIBER24 OPTICS

2.3 Attenuation in Fiber OpticsFIBER25 OPTICS

DISPERSION IN OPTICAL FIBER

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength Curves

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER29 OPTICS

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER30 OPTICS

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER31 OPTICS

Types of fiber optic cable

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER32 OPTICS

4.1 SINGLE MODE CABLE

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER34 OPTICS

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER35 OPTICS

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER37 OPTICS

4.4 STEP-INDEX MULTIMODE FIBER

4.5 GRADED-INDEX MULTIMODE FIBER

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER39 OPTICS

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER40 OPTICS

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER42 OPTICS

Gruber Industries cable connectors

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER44 OPTICS

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER46 OPTICS Armored Cable

Figure 1 Interconnections Between Different Network Types

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER50 OPTICS

Figure 3 Bus Network with Backbone

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER51 OPTICS

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER52 OPTICS

Figure 5 Token Ring Network Topology

Figure 6 Self-healing Ring Topology

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER53 OPTICS

Optical Fiber Fabrication

Figure1: Refractive index as a function of dopants materials and their concentration 54

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER55 OPTICS

3 Chalgenide Glass Fiber

4 Active Glass Fibers

.5 Plastic Optical Fibers

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER56 OPTICS

olysterene core/methyl methacrylate cladding.

olymethyl methacrylate core/copolymer cladding.

re are two basic techniques used in the fabrication of optical fibers:

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER57 OPTICS

Figure 2: Double-crucible fiber drawing process

2 Vapor phase oxidation

3 Preparation of the preform

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER58 OPTICS

er step or graded index performs can be made.

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER60 OPTICS

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER61 OPTICS

Figure 5: Outside Vapor-Deposition

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER62 OPTICS

Typical Dispersion vs. Wavelength CurvesFIBER64 OPTICS

Figure 8: Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition 1.2.8 Fiber Drawing