Tutorial 2

1. How is LED output modulated?

a) externally by varying current delivered to an external modulator
b) directly by varying drive current
c) directly by varying voltage applied to an external modulator
d) directly by varying LED operating temperature
2. 10 mW of light enters a 10-km long fiber whose attenuation is 0.00435 dB/m. How
much light remains at the output of the fiber?
a) 0.00045 mW
b) -33.5 dBm
c) -3.5 dB
d) a and b
e) none of the above
3. A step-index multimode fiber has a core diameter of 50 microns and a cladding refractive
index of 1.45. If the intermodal dispersion is 10 ns/km, find its numerical aperture.
What is the maximum bit rate that can be transmitted along this fiber over a distance
of 20 km?
4. Using the definition of group velocity, show that it can be written as:
vg = v + k

dv
dk

where v is the phase velocity and k is the wavenumber.

5. Assume that the bit rate in an optical link is 1 Gb/s, the dispersion at 1.55 microns is
17 ps/(nm-km), and the attenuation is 0.25 dB/km, and at 1.3 microns the dispersion
is zero and the attenuation is 0.5 dB/km. Also, assume that NRZ modulation scheme
is used and the maximum pulse spreading due to dispersion is half of the bit period.
(a) You have a transmitter that operates at a wavelength of 1.55 microns and has a
spectral width of 1 nm, and an output power of 0.5 mW. The receiver requires -30 dBm
of input power in order to achieve the des ired bit error rate. What is the length of
longest link that you can build?
(b) You have another transmitter that operates at a wavelength of 1.3 microns, has a
spectral width of 2 nm, and an output power of 1 mW. Assume that the receiver is the
same as the one in a). What is the length of the longest link that you can build?