Dispersion

Dispersion in Optical Fibers:

 In communication, ‘dispersion’ is used to
describe any process by which any
electromagnetic signal propagating in a
physical medium is degraded because the
various wave characteristics (i.e.,
frequencies, wavelengths) of the signal
have different propagation velocities
within the physical medium.

 This happens because the velocity of

propagation of any electromagnetic wave
is frequency/wavelength dependent.
Signal Distortion in Fiber:

 Different frequency components travel at

different velocities in fiber, arriving at
different times at the receiver.
 Due to this effect Broadening of Pulse occurs.
 This phenomenon of pulse broadening is
referred to as pulse dispersion.
 The medium possessing this property is called
as dispersive media.
 Dispersion & Inter Symbol Interference (ISI)
• In a digital communication
system pulse broadening results
in an overlap of pulses.
• The optical power associated
with broadened pulse gets
reduced and hence it becomes
difficult to detect such pulses at
receiver, it gives more BER.
• Thus it limits the maximum
permissible bit rate (Bmax).
• It is not the data rate but the
Data rate-Distance product
which is governed by the Pulse overlap (a) input pulses at T1, (b)
dispersion (BxL). distinguishable pulses at time T2>T1, (c) barely
distinguishable pulses at T3>T2 (d)
indistinguishable pulses at T4>T3.
• To understand and to calculate/formulate the
Dispersion it is necessary to understand and find
First:

1. Group velocity of the pulse.

2. Group delay which is pulse delay per unit distance.
3. Find delay over the spectral width and pulse
broadening.
4. Get dispersion, pulse broadening per unit distance
per unit spectral width of the source.
 Phase and Group Velocity of Waves
• To understand the difference between phase and group
velocity of waves, consider the following analogy. A group of
people, say city marathon runners, start from the starting at
the same time. Initially it would appear that all of them are
running at the same speed. As time passes, group spreads out
(disperses) simply because each runner in the group is
running with different speed. If you think of phase velocity to
be like the speed of an individual runner, then the group
velocity is the speed of the entire group as a whole.
• Obviously and most often, individual runners can run faster
than the group as a whole. To stretch this analogy, we note
that the phase velocity vp of waves are typically larger than
the group velocity vg of waves. However, this really depends
on the properties of the medium. The media in which vg = vp
is called the non-dispersive medium.
 Wave Velocities
• 1- Plane wave velocity: For a plane wave
propagating along z-axis in an unbounded
homogeneous region of refractive index, n1 which is
represented by exp( jωt  jk 1 z ) , the velocity of
constant phase plane is:
 c
v 
k1 n1
• k1=k n1 =2π n1 /λ=propagation constant in medium n1
• β =z- component of the propagation vector
• 2- Modal wave phase velocity: For a modal wave
propagating along z-axis represented by
exp( jωt  jz ) , the velocity of constant phase
plane is: ω c
vp  
 neff
 Group Velocity
• Group velocity refers to a group composed of
waves within a frequency band.
• For transmission system operation, the most
important and useful type of velocity is the
group velocity, Vg . This is the actual velocity
with which the signal information and
energy/envelope is traveling down the fiber.
• 'Group velocity' is the speed at which the
energy in a particular mode travels along
the fiber.
• V  dω
d
g
 Group Delay

• The observable delay experiences by the optical

signal and energy, when traveling a length of L along
the fiber is commonly referred to as group delay.

• The group delay is given by:

L d
  L
Vg dω

• It is important to note that all above quantities depend

both on frequency and the propagation mode.
Dispersion

Dispersion of optical energy within an optical fiber

falls into following categories:

 Intermodal Delay or Modal Delay

 Intramodal Dispertion or Chromatic Dispersion

Material Dispertion
Waveguide Dispertion

 Polarization Mode Dispersion

Irfan khan
• The dispersion is a weak phenomenon.

• That means the pulses slowly broaden as

they travel along the optical fiber.

• It is therefore appropriate to investigate

one type of dispersion at a time.

Irfan khan
Dispersion
Intermodal delay/ modal delay
Intermodal distortion or modal delay appears only in multimode fibers.

This dispersion is due to change in velocity from one mode to other.

This signal distortion mechanism is a result of each mode having a

different value of the group velocity at a single frequency.

The amount of spreading that occurs in a fiber is a function

of the number of modes propagated by the fiber and length
of the fiber

Group Velocity: It is the speed at which energy in a particular

mode travels along the fiber. Irfan khan
Intermodal delay/ modal delay

Corresponding to different modes, a pulse travelling within

the multimode fiber will travel with different group velocities.

The maximum pulse broadening arising from the modal

delay is the difference between the travel time Tmax of the
longest ray and the travel time Tmin of the shortest ray .

This broadening is simply obtained from ray tracing for a

fiber of length L.

Irfan khan
Intermodal delay/ modal delay

When each mode has same velocity in the

step index fibers, the intermodal dispersion is
the outcome of varying path lengths among
different lengths.

Irfan khan
 The intermodal dispersion in multimode
fibers can be minimized by adopting
optimum refractive index profile provided
by the near parabolic profile of most GI
fibers.
 So, the overall pulse broadening in
multimode GI fibers is less than that of
the SI fibers.
 Thus GI fibers used with a multimode
source gives a tremendous bandwidth
advantage over multimode SI fibers.
 To eliminate the Intermodal Dispersion
SMF is the best solution.
Intermodal delay/ modal delay
Fiber Capacity:

Fiber capacity is specified in terms of the bit rate-distance

product BL.
(Bit rate times the possible transmission distance L)

For neighboring signal pulses to remain distinguishable at

the receiver, the pulse spread should be less than 1/B.
Or
Pulse spread should be less than the width of a bit period.

∆T < 1 /B General requirement

∆T ≤ 0.1 /B For high performance link

Irfan khan
Dispersion
Intramodal Dispersion or Chromatic Dispersion

This takes place within a single mode.

Intramodal dispersion depends on the wavelength. Its effect
on signal distortion increases with the spectral width of the
light source.
Spectral width is approximately 4 to 9 percent of a central
wavelength.

Two main causes of intramodal dispersion are as:

1. Material Dispersion
2. Waveguide Dispersion
Irfan khan
Intramodal Dispersion or Chromatic Dispersion

Material Dispersion:
The material dispersion is due intrinsic property of the material. Glass is a
dispersive medium. We can recall from high school physics that glass has
different refractive index for different colors.
This refractive index property causes a wavelength dependence of the
group velocity of a given mode; that is,
Pulse spreading occurs even when different wavelength follow the
same path.

Material dispersion can be reduced:

•Either by choosing sources with narrower spectral
output widths
OR
•By operating at longer wavelengths. Irfan khan
• Why is the refractive index of glass
different for different Colours of light?
• While the refractive index affects
wavelength, it depends on
frequency, colour and energy so the
resulting difference in the bending angles
causes white light to split into its
constituent colours.
• This is called dispersion.

Irfan khan
 Material dispersion

d L  g d  d 2n
vg  | 0 ,  g  ,  ( )   ( 2 ) ,
d vg L d c d

 d 2n
Dm   ( 2 ),  g  Dm L,
c d

Example --- material dispersion

Calculate the material dispersion effect for LED with line width of 100nm and a laser with a
line width of 2nm for a fiber with dispersion coefficient of Dm = 22pskm-1nm-1 at 1310nm.

Solution:

  Dm L  2.2ns, for the LED

  Dm L  44 ps, for the Laser

• The sign of material dispersion is negative,
it merely indicates a decreasing group
delay per unit length for an increasing
value of wavelength.
• Since the group delay is related inversely
to the group velocity inside the optical
fiber, a decrease in the group delay with
wavelength indicates an increase in the
group velocity with increasing wavelength.
• This means longer wavelengths (or
lower frequencies) travel with higher
velocities as compared to the shorter
wavelengths (or higher frequencies).
Intramodal Dispersion or Chromatic Dispersion

Waveguide Dispersion:

It causes pulse spreading because only part of the optical

power propagation along a fiber is confined to core.

Dispersion arises because the fraction of light power

propagating in the cladding travels faster than the light
confined to core.

Single mode fiber confines only 80 percent of the power in

the core for V values around 2.
The amount of waveguide dispersion depends
on the fiber design.
Irfan khan
• The waveguide dispersion is due to the bound structure of
the optical fiber.
• While analyzing waveguide dispersion we assume that
the material dispersion is absent, that is the refractive
indices of the core and the cladding are independent of
wavelength.
• Waveguide dispersion is due to the dependency of the
group velocity of the fundamental mode as well as other
modes on the V number.
• In order to calculate waveguide dispersion, we consider
that n is not dependent on wavelength.
• For small radius waveguides (i.e. SM fiber), waveguide
dispersion can be significant but for large radius
waveguides (MMSI/MMGI fiber), waveguide dispersion
is very small and can be neglected.
 Waveguide dispersion

Dispersions in single mode fiber

• Waveguide dispersion
d L  g d n2  d 2 (Vb)
vg  | 0 ,  g  ,  ( )   V L ,
d vg L d c dV 2

n2  d 2 (Vb)
Dw   V ,  g  Dw L ,
c dV 2

Example --- waveguide dispersion

n2 = 1.48, and delta n = 0.2 percent. Calculate Dw at 1310nm.

Solution:

b  (1.1428  0.996 / V ) 2 , for V between 1.5 – 2.5.

d 2 (Vb )
V  0.26 ,
dV 2

n2  d 2 (Vb)
Dw   V  1.9 ps /(nm  km),
c dV 2
Intramodal/Chromatic dispersion (material plus waveguide dispersion)

 g
 ( Dm  Dw ) ,
L
• material dispersion is determined by
the material composition of a fiber.
• waveguide dispersion is determined
by the waveguide index profile of a
fiber
Single mode fiber dispersion
For NRZ signals BR=2BW
For RZ signals BR=BW
 Bireferingence
• Along with the mode field diameter there are
various other parameters that are used to
characterize an optical fiber completely when it
is laid into the system.
• One such important parameter is the
‘birefringence’ of an optical fiber.
• Any general linear polarization inside an optical
fiber may be decomposed into horizontal and
vertical components as shown in the figure
below.
• If the core of the optical fiber is perfectly circular, both of these
orthogonal polarization components propagate through the fiber with
the same phase constant and have equal phase velocities along the
optical fiber so that at the output the linear polarization of the input
light remains intact.
• But in practical fiber manufacturing processes, due to some errors,
the manufactured fiber core sometimes has an elliptic nature.
• Due to this ellipticity, both the orthogonal polarization components,
now, have different effective modal indices and propagate with
different phase constants.
• So there is a net phase change between these two components
which result in the initial linear polarization to turn elliptical.
• If we assume ‘nx’ and ‘ny’ be the effective modal
refractive indices for the horizontal and vertical modes
respectively, then the birefringence is defined as:

• If the resultant phase-difference is 900 the polarization

turns circular and for all other non-zero phase-
differences the polarization would be elliptical.
• So, birefringence actually indicates the relative phase
change that may occur in the optical fiber when used in
the system.
• Birefringence causes the two orthogonal polarizations to
travel with different phase velocities thereby creating a
resultant dispersion in the optical fiber.
• If we now observe the continuous changes in
polarizations as the signal propagates through the fiber,
we would see the following:
• As the figure shows, there is a cyclic change from linear to elliptical
and back to linear but with different orientation.
• The length of the fiber at which this cycle completes is called the
beat length of the fiber.
• Different fibers may have different beat lengths due to different
birefringence values. The beat length of the optical fiber is given by:
Polarization Mode dispersion
 Non-linear Effects in Fiber
• After certain threshold power level, that is, at high
intensity, if there are a number of signal
wavelengths present, then the nonlinear effects in
fiber are significant.
• Nonlinear effects can cause reduction in power or
gain in power at different wavelengths, crosstalk
between adjacent channels or wavelength
conversion.
• The nonlinear effects can be divided into two
cases based on their origins:
– Nonlinear/Stimulated scatterings (i.e. SRS and SBS)
– Optical Kerr effects (i.e. FWM, SPM and XPM).
 :: NONLINEAR SCATTERING ::

 Interaction of light waves with phonons in the silica medium.

 Energy gets transferred from lower λ1 to higher wavelength λ4.
 Stimulated Raman Scattering
Power from lower wavelength channel is
transferred to the higher wavelength channel
• The interaction between incident
optical signal (photon) and
molecular vibrations gives rise to
Stimulated Raman scattering
(SRS).The Raman threshold
power for single channel optical
system is 32 Aeff
PRamanTh 
gR
Where α is attenuation coefficient,
Aeff is the effective core area of an optical fiber
gR is the Raman gain coefficient.

In WDM systems, the channels at shorter wavelengths will act as pump signals and suffer
from excess loss. On the other hand, the channels at longer wavelengths acting as probe
signals are amplified via SRS
 Stimulated Brillouin Scattering
• The interaction between a strong optical signal and an acoustic
wave gives rise to the non-linear effect called as stimulated
Brillouin scattering (SBS).
• It causes refractive index variations, that in turn causes the
scattering of the optical signal in backward direction. Due to
back scattering there is a loss of signal power. The frequency
of scattered light also gets downshifted. Shift in frequency is
equal to frequency of an acoustic wave.
• The Brillouin threshold power is
 Aeff  vP 
PBrillouinTh  42  1  
gB  vB 

where gB is the Brillouin gain coefficient,

vP is the signal line width, and
vB is the Brillouin gain bandwidth
 :: FOUR WAVE MIXING ::

FWM gives rise to new frequencies.

These signals appear as crosstalk to existing signals.
Effect is higher when ∆λ is less.
FWM increases as WDM – CWDM – DWDM
 Four-Wave Mixing

• Three optical frequencies, f1, f2, and f3 may interact to produce

a fourth frequency, ffwm, ffwm = f1 + f2 − f3.
• FWM becomes more intense, if the optical power of each
channel is increased, or if the channels are spaced very close to
each other.
• FWM can be reduced by
– Uneven spacing between channels.
– Increasing channel spacing.
– Reducing the power to be launched into the fiber.
 :: SELF & CROSS PHASE MODULATION ::

Phase angle depends on light intensity.

Φ= γ Pin Leff for SPM.

Φ1= γ (Pin1+ Pin2+ Pin3) Leff for CPM/XPM.

DWDM