International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2012)

137

Optimization of Repeater Spacing for Terrestrial and
Undersea Fiber Optic Communication
1
T. Sabapathi ,
2
M. S. Ajay Gautham,
3
R. Paranthaman
Mepco Schlenk Engg. College,Sivakasi-626005, Tamilnadu ,India
sabapathi@mepcoeng.ac.in
ajaymsgautham17@gmail.com
pdhaman91@gmail.com

Abstract- Repeater spacing in fiber optic communication is
optimized taking into consideration various parameters such
as fiber attenuation, Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS),
Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS), fiber attenuation,
photodiode sensitivity and input power. In our work, we have
taken a trade off between power threshold in order to reduce
SBS varying the effective fiber length and effective fiber core
area. Also, we have obtained results for various repeater
spacing

Keywords - Repeater, Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS),
Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS), Fiber nonlinearities,
Multi Tone, Optical signal to noise ratio.
I. INTRODUCTION
Repeaters are basically used in Long Haul optical fiber
communication and undersea fiber optic communication in
order to increase the signal strength. Generally, when a
signal propagates for long distances, its strength degrades
and will be badly affected by noise. In order to overcome
this, we deploy repeaters at regular intervals to boost the
signal strength up. So far, 304 km distance of repeater
spacing has been reported as in [2].But one solution to this
problem [To minimize the number of repeaters or to
maximize the repeater spacing] is to increase the input
optical power to high levels so that the signal reaches the
other end without any appreciable degradation in strength.
Other complications such as Stimulated Raman
Scattering(SBS), Rayleigh scattering, Stimulated Brillion
Scattering(SBS) must be taken into account . We also use
EDFA to reduce the loss due to optical - electrical
conversion and vice versa as in [7]. Further works to
increase the power to very high levels lead to the discovery
of Soliton based optical communication in which power is
increased to very high levels and highly stable laser pulses
or solitons are produced and thus representing a bit of
information to almost in a time interval of femto seconds
and a message carrying capacity of Tb/s range can be
achieved but still it has a lot of limitations.
Another way is to install repeaters at regular intervals
but, installation of repeaters adds on to the cost of
communication and the net spacing between them has to be
decreased and in undersea fiber optic communication, the
installation of repeater is a major concern since it is
difficult to deploy underwater and the maintenance of such
repeaters mammoth task.
A. Influence of ASE
When light propagates long distances it picks up
disturbances called noise. Generally in an optical amplifier
if G is the gain of the amplifier the signal amplitude is
multiplied gain G times. But in the case of optical
communication along with the noise N
in
the signal picks
up during its long travel which is amplified gain times
along with the required signal amplification the amplifier in
turn introduces its own additional noise. This is the
scenario in the real time optical fiber communication.
Therefore the output noise N
out
becomes greater than G
times the input noise i.e,

N
out
= G * N
in
+ Amplifiers own
Noise (1)

Any optical signal propagating through an optical fiber
undergoes an attenuation as it travels very long distances
before it reaches the other destination. Also the repeaters
along its path in addition introduces its own noise. So the
signal is degraded to a large extent when it reaches the
other end. This problem can also be extended to WDM
system as in ref [12][13][14].Hence we deploy repeaters at
equal intervals to boost the signal level.
B. Fiber Nonlinearities
Hence with the knowledge that the fiber exhibits less
attenuation at 850 nm, 1310 nm, 1550 nm (based on the 1
st

overtone as in ref [3] and also taking into account the non
linearity of the fiber at other wavelengths.

International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2012)
138


So here, we take up the work to optimize the repeater
spacing in terrestrial and undersea fiber optic
communication with the above parameters in mind. One
way in this approach is to decrease the ASE and in turn
increase the optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) as in
ref[8].Excess ASE is an unwanted parameter in any laser
source as in ref[9] since it limits the maximum gain that
can be achieved. Thus by taking into account all the above
parameters we would try reducing the spacing between the
repeaters.
C. SBS Threshold
One of the possible way to reduce the number of
repeaters is to dump more power into the fiber. However,
it may lead to Fiber nonlinearities. The Stimulated
Brillouin Scattering pull down the dumping of power.
Here, phase control is being made to maximize the
threshold power as in ref [1] to be launched into the fiber.
we can increase the SBS threshold and thereby feed in
more power and eventually the spacing between the
repeater can be large enough. The repeater spacing is most
bothering in the case of undersea repeaters taking into
considerations the cost factor and the tediousness in
installation and maintenance of the repeaters. Since this
gives way to launch a reasonably high amount of power in
the fiber, this helps us to meet the optical signal to noise
ratio requirements and receiver sensitivity
requirements(based on square law detection as in ref [5]
For the particular application, Since the dispersion effects
are minimum at 1550nm wavelength we use the same as in
ref [4] we could set the max tolerable spectral width

in
the optical source so as to maximize the power threshold.


P
th
= 21

(1+

) (2)


According to equation (1), we infer that it depends on
the following parameters effective cross section area(A
eff
),
polarization factor(b), effective fiber length(L
eff
), Brillouin
gain coefficient(g
B),
denotes the Brillouin gain width(V
B
)

and the source line width (V
source
)
Also, we realize from the equation that P
th
has to be
increased so that SBS is pulled down. One way is to
increase the effective cross sectional area of the fiber i.e.,
the fiber span is increased and the number of signals are
increased. Ironically this in turn leads to spectral
broadening and Intersymbol interference(ISI). These are
purely unwanted phenomena.


Commonly single mode fibers are used for long distance
fiber optic communication. But from the above analysis P
th

cannot be increased over a certain level for a given core
diameter in a single mode fiber. So increasing A
eff
results
in a multimode fiber.
Case 1: Similarly effective length(L
eff
) is another
parameter which when decreased leads to increase in power
threshold. But here the problem is that the input power
decreases exponentially as it propagates through the fiber.
This basically means that the effective length should be
small enough so that input power level is constant over
certain length of the fiber. Eventually decreasing this
effective length increases the power threshold, shown in
equation(2)

(2)

Case2: Next in the picture comes the source spectral
width(

), which has to be minimum so that the optical

signal can propagate long distance within a tolerable
dispersion thereby pulling down material dispersion to
which the spectral width is directly related. Also the
brillouin width has to be maximum so that the term
V
source
/V
B
becomes small.shown in equation (3)

Pulse Spread = D
mat
*

* L (3)

Thus by increasing the power threshold of the fiber the
effect of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in pulled down
and thus the optical signal can propagate long distances.
II. SIMULATION IN OPTSIM
The properties of the individual elements shown in the
OPTSIM layout of Fig.1 could be set according to our
requirements.


Fig. 1: Overall Layout in OPTSIM



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Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2012)
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The layout is then simulated. For viewing the results,
the optical Spectrum analyzer is used. After the execution,
we have obtained the following results.

Optsim Results:






















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Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2012)
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Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2012)
141

III. MATLAB RESULTS
Fig. 10 : Output power Vs No. of repeaters

Fig 11: Output power Vs No. of repeaters


Fig 12: Output power Vs No. of repeaters














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IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, in order to optimize the spacing between
the repeaters, we have tried to maximize the power
threshold of SBS considering all the influencing factors and
thereby backscattering is avoided as in ref[10]. As all the
parameters are interrelated we have taken one fiber non-
linearity i.e., SBS and its tradeoff with the input power,
correspondingly increasing the input power to increase the
Brillouin threshold. Thus results using optsim have proved
that, fiber nonlinearities proves to be a major constraint in
the optimization of distance between the repeaters.

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