OPTICAL COMMUNICATION

INTRODUCTION TO FIBER OPTICS

 Text / Reference Books

• Optical Fiber Communication – Gerd Keiser –

Mc Graw Hill – Third Edition. 2000

• Optical Fiber Communication – John M.

Senior – Pearson Education – Second
Edition.2007
 BENEFITS

• Immense bandwidth to utilize

• Total electrical isolation in the transmission medium
• Very low transmission loss,
• Small size and light weight,
• High signal security,
• Immunity to interference and crosstalk,
• Very low power consumption and wide scope of system
expansion etc.
 APPLICATIONS

• Public network field which includes trunk networks, junction

networks, local access networks, submerged systems,
synchronous systems etc.
• Field of military applications ,
• Civil, consumer and industrial applications,
• Field of computers which is the center of research right now
Relevance of optical communication in
backhaul/backbone networks and
interconnects
 Why Optical Fibers?
1000

Limited by
cross talk
Attenuation in dB/km

100 WG 16
Twisted pair

WG 10
10

50 mm circular
Limited by
1 waveguide (TE O1)
radiation Optical Fiber

Open-wire pair
0.1
100 KHz 1 MHz 10 MHz 100 MHz 1 GHz 10 GHz
Frequency
Fiber Optic Communication System
 Optical Communication Systems

• Communication systems with light as the carrier and optical

fiber as communication medium
• Optical fiber is used to contain and guide light waves
– Typically made of glass or plastic
– Propagation of light in atmosphere is impractical
• This is similar to cable guiding electromagnetic
waves
• Capacity comparison
– Microwave at 10 GHz
– Light at 100 Tera Hz (1014 )
 Optical Fiber
• Optical fiber is made from thin strands of either
glass or plastic

• It has little mechanical strength, so it must be

enclosed in a protective jacket

• Often, two or more fibers are enclosed in the same

cable for increased bandwidth and redundancy in
case one of the fibers breaks

• It is also easier to build a full-duplex system using

two fibers, one for transmission in each direction
Optical Fiber & Communications System
Fiber-Optic Cable Construction
What do the fiber terms 9/125, 50/125 and 62.5/125 (micron)

Remember: A micron (short for micrometer) is one-millionth of a meter

Typically n(cladding) < n(core)

 Optical Fiber Construction

• Core – thin glass center of the

fiber where light travels.
• Cladding – outer optical material
surrounding the core
• Buffer Coating – plastic
coating that protects
the fiber.
 Free Space Optics

• FSO is a communication system where free space

acts as medium between transceivers
• They should be in LOS for successful transmission of
optical signal
• There are many advantages of FSO like high
bandwidth and no spectrum license
• The transmission in FSO is dependent on the medium
because the presence of foreign elements like rain,
fog, and haze, physical obstruction, scattering, and
atmospheric turbulence are some of these factors.
 Optical Laws
• In optics the refractive index or index of refraction n of a substance (optical
medium) is a dimensionless number that describes how light, or any
other radiation, propagates through that medium. n=c/v,
where ’c’ is the speed of light in vacuum and ’v’ is the speed of light in the
substance
Snell’s Law
Critical Angle
Angle of incidence (inside the higher-index
material) for which Snell's Law predicts a
90-degree angle of refraction -- light follows
the surface rather than entering the low-
index material.
Total Internal Reflection

Propagating wave strikes a medium

boundary at an angle larger than a
particular critical angle with respect
to the normal to the surface.

θi> θc
 Fiber Types

• Plastic core and cladding

• Glass core with plastic cladding PCS
(Plastic-Clad Silicon)
• Glass core and glass cladding SCS: Silica-
clad silica
• Under research: non silicate: Zinc-chloride
– 1000 time as efficient as glass

Core Cladding
Types of Fibers
•Single mode/Multi-mode
•Step Index/Graded Index
•Dispersion Shifted/Non-dispersion shifted
•Silica/fluoride/Other materials

Major Performance Concerns for Fibers

•Wavelength range
•Maximum Propagation Distance
•Maximum bit rate
•Crosstalk
 Plastic Fiber

• Used for short distances

• Higher attenuation, but easy to install
• Better withstand stress
• Less expensive
• 60% less weight
 Rays and Modes

Types of Rays
• Meridional Rays (Zigzag Path)- Ray Theory
- Restricted to one plane
• Skew Rays (Helical Path)- Mode Theory
- Not Restricted to one plane
 Numerical Aperture
NA is a measure of the light
gathering ability of a fiber. It also
indicates how easy it is to couple
light into a fiber.
Acceptance Angle
 What are Modes?
• Modes are electromagnetic field distributions that satisfy Maxwell’s
equations within a given geometry (e.g. rectangular/circular
waveguide)

• Physical basis of modes

– interference of waves near the boundary!

2
n2 2  2. . n1 d cos q  2m
 Standing
n1>n2 wave
n1 qi

Traveling
wave
 Cutoff Wavelength and V Number

• Guided modes in the fiber occur when the values for β satisfy the condition

n2 k ˂ β ˂ n1 k
at the limit of propagation when β = n2 k
• A mode is no longer properly guided and is called being cutoff
• Unguided mode appear for the frequencies below cutoff point where,
β ˂ n2 k
• Wave propagation is still below the cutoff frequency for leaky modes
• The modes are cut off when β = n2 k
• The wavelength at which the higher-order modes are cutoff when
V ≤ 2.405 is called cutoff wavelength λc
Fiber modes --- single mode and multi-mode fibers
V-number
2a 2a
V  (n  n )
2 2 1/ 2
, Vcutoff  (n12  n22 )1/ 2  2.41,
 c
1 2

Number of modes when V>>2.41

V2
M ,
2
Normalized propagation constant
2
neff  n22
b , b  (1.1428  0.996 / V ) 2 , for V between 1.5 – 2.5.
n12  n22

Mode field diameter (MFD)

1
2 w  2a (1  ),
V
 Electromagnetics - Basics
• All electromagnetic phenomena may be explained by a
set of 4 postulates called “Maxwell’s Equations”

e – permittivity

m – permeability

s - conductivity

Standard Wave Equation

Wave Equations for Step-Index
Fibers
Modes in Step-Index Fibers
 Normalized Propagation Constant -b

The number of modes that exist in a waveguide as a function of v may be

conveniently represented in terms of a normalized propagation constant b
 Polarization Components of Light

• Ordinary light wave consist of many transverse electromagnetic

waves that vibrate in a variety of directions- Unpolarized light
• Unpolarized light
- It consist of combination of parallel vibration and perpendicular
vibration
- Two Planes
- The plane containing the incident and reflected rays
- Parallel polarization
- Perpendicular polarization
- All the electric field planes of the different transverse waves are
aligned parallel to each other, then the light wave is linearly
polarized
Polarization Components of Light
 Brewster’s Angle

The reflected beam is partially polarized and at a specific

angle Known as Brewster’s angle
Polarization-Sensitive Materials
 Modes in Optical Fibers

2a  mn / k0  n2 neff  n2
V  n n
2 2
bmn  
 1 2
n1  n2 n1  n2

neff bmn
n1 1 LP01
LP21 LPmn
LP11
LP02
# of # of
maxima maxima
n2 0
in f dir in r dir
0 2 4 6 8 V

For singlemode fibers, n2

 1.619 2.879  n1
MFD  2a .  0.65  1.5  6 
 V V 
General conditions
LINEARLY POLARIZED MODES
LINEARLY POLARIZED MODES
Power Flow in Step-Index Fiber
-Total Average Cladding Power
 SINGLE-MODE FIBERS
Rays and Their E-field Distribution
 Single Mode Fiber
-Construction
•Core-Cladding index difference varies between 0.2-1.0
percent

•Mode field diameter (MFD)

-Field distribution of the fundamental fiber mode
-Function of optical source wavelength
Mode Field Diameter
Propagation Modes in Single-Mode Fibers
GRADED-INDEX FIBER STRUCTURE
Cutoff Condition in Graded-Index Fibers

V = 2.405sqrt(1+2/α)
FIBER MATERIALS
 FIBER MATERIALS

Requirements for Selection of materials

• Long
• Thin
• Flexible
• Transparent
• Different refractive indices for core and
cladding
 Types of materials

• Glass Fibers
• Active Glass Fibers
• Plastic Optical Fibers
• Photonic Crystal fibers (PCF)
• Photonic Bandgap Fiber
Photonic Crystal fibers (PCF)
Glass Fibers
 FIBER FABRICATION

Two Basic Techniques

• Vapor-Phase oxidation process
• Direct-Melt Methods

• Outside Vapor-Phase Oxidation

• Vapor-Phase Axial Deposition
• Modified Chemical vapor Deposition
• Plasma-Activated Chemical vapor Deposition
• Photonic Crystal Fiber Fabrication
Outside Vapor-Phase
Oxidation
Vapor-Phase Axial Deposition
Modified Chemical vapor
Deposition
Plasma-Activated Chemical vapor Deposition
THANK YOU