Khulna University of Engineering and Technology

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

ECE 4203
Optical Fiber Communications





Lecture 1



Introduction
Developments of Communication Systems
Brief History of Optical Communications
Frequency used in Optical Fiber Communication
Basic Elements of Optical Fiber Transmission Link
Advantages of Optical Communications

1.1 Introduction
Communication may be broadly defined as the transfer of information from one
point to another. When the information is to be conveyed over any distance a
communication system is usually required. Within a communication system the
information transfer is frequently achieved by superimposing or modulating the
information onto an electromagnetic wave which acts as a carrier for the information
signal. This modulated carrier is then transmitted to the required destination where it is
received and the original information signal is obtained by demodulation. Sophisticated
techniques have been developed for this process using electromagnetic carrier waves
operating at radio frequencies as well as microwave and millimeter wave frequencies.



1.2 Development of communications

1.2.1 Visual optical communications
The mainstream of communications was the visual optical communication using
visible optical carrier waves or light for thousands years. Simple system such as beacon-
fires in ancient Egypt, ancient China, old Greek and Rome was developed to color-
combination signal fires with binoculars. Other techniques were semaphore flags,
reflecting mirrors and signaling lamps. They have been disappearing since the Mores
telegraph invention (1837).
1.2.2 Electric communications
Electric communication started from the invention of telegraph.
- first transatlantic cable (between London and New York) in 1866: Queen
Victorias message to President Buchanan The Queen congratulates the
President on the successful completion of an undertaking which she hopes
may serve as an additional bond of Union between the United States and
England .

It took the Queen 1.5 hours to receive a reply from President Buchanan.

Chief engineer of project: Lord Kelvin.

- 1940 - first coaxial cable system, 3MHz system with 300 voice channels
or a single television channel, the bandwidth is limited by the frequency
dependent cable losses which increases rapidly beyond 10MHz.

- 1975 - the most advanced coaxial cable system, 274Mb/s with repeater
spacing of 1km. Very expensive to operate.





1.2.3 Communication using high-frequency electromagnetic waves
The inventions of Bells telephone (1876) and Marconis wireless communication
(1896) were two epoch-making events. Information was carried and transmitted by
electromagnetic (EM) carrier wave. Since then the frequency of EM carrier wave has
been rising.
The prerequisite for using a EM wave at certain-frequency for communication is the
generation this coherent EM wave. Thus only 20 years later after Marconis
demonstration the practical communication technique appeared. Lower frequency and
hence longer wavelength EM waves, i.e. radio and microwave, proved suitable carriers
for information transfer in the atmosphere, being far less affected by the atmospheric
conditions. Depending on their wavelengths these EM carriers can be transmitted over
considerable distances but are limited in the amount of information they can convey by
their frequencies. The information-carrying capacity is directly related to the bandwidth
or frequency extent of the modulated carrier, which is generally limited to a fixed
fraction of the carrier frequency. In the theory, the greater the carrier frequency is, the
larger the available transmission bandwidth and thus the information-carrying capacity
of the communication system has. For this reason radio communication was developed to
higher frequencies, i.e. VHF and UHF, leading to the introduction of the even higher
frequency microwave and latterly, millimeter wave transmission.

Until 1960, the coherent wave generation together with the communication
technology increases the used frequency by one order of magnitude every six years in
average. However, they got stagnant for about twenty years. There seemed to be an
invisible wall at around 1 mm wavelength. Photoelectronic era started by a leap from
300 GHz (mm wave) to 300 THz (m wave). The leap A in the fundamental technology
occurs with the aid of the invention of laser and the leap B in the communication
technology with the practicability of optical fibers.
The communication at optical frequencies offers an increase in the potential usable
bandwidth by a factor of around 10
4
over high frequency microwave transmission. An
additional benefit of the use of high carrier frequencies is the general ability of the
communication system to concentrate the available power within the transmitted
electromagnetic wave, thus gives an improved system performance.

1.2.4 Optical communication
Using the light as the carrier signal in communication system is nothing new. In
1880 Alexander Graham Bell invented the photophone just fourth year after his invention
of telephone. He demonstrated that speech could be transmitted on a beam of light. Bell
focused a narrow beam of sunlight onto a thin mirror on a diaphragm. When the sound
waves of human speech caused the diaphragm with mirror to vibrate, the beam of
sunlight was modulated and the amount of energy transmitted to the light detector varied
correspondingly. The light reaching the selenium detector caused its resistance, the
therefore the intensity of the current in a telephone receiver, to vary, setting up speech
waves at the receiver end. Bell managed to give speech transmission over a distance of
200 m by using his ingenious invention.
Problems for optical communication were: (a) the lack of suitable light source; (b) the
severe influence of disturbances such as rain, snow, fog, dust and atmospheric turbulence.
From 1930 to 1940s, research on optical communication between warships was carried
out in some countries. The signal source was a high-power bulb with current modulation.
The receiver was a paraboloidal mirror and the signal was demodulated by photoelectric
valve. It did not reach practicability.
What is new today are the techniques available for generating a light beam that can be
modulated at extremely high rates and, equally important transmitted through a low-loss
optical fiber several miles long with acceptable loss of energy.
Modern light-wave communication had its birth in the 1960s. Laser provided a
powerful coherent light source, together with the possibility of modulation at high
frequency. In addition the low beam divergence of the laser made enhanced free space
optical transmission a practical possibility, which was still restricted by the atmospheric
conditions and made limited success. Some links have been implemented for applications
such as the linking of TV camera to a base vehicle and for data links of a few hundred
meters between buildings. Similar techniques could also be used for inter-satellite
communication in outer space.
For optical communications, because light gets absorbed on foggy or rainy days, early
work was aimed at beams of light propagating inside tubes running in similar ducts to the
proposed millimetric waveguide system.

1.2.5 Light transmission path

(a) Optical fiber
The essence of optical fiber is a homogeneous dielectric rod although a
communication optical fiber with good light transmission characteristics possesses
complex internal distribution of refractive indices. Light transmits in the fiber
through multi-total internal reflection. British physicist John Tyndall demonstrated
light transmission in 1870 in water flow from an opening under a big tank. Such
structure of light waveguide was used in stomach endoscope in fifties but few
considered the possibility to apply optical fiber for telecommunication. There were
probably two reasons:
i. The loss factor was too large (10
-8
). The attenuation owing to dielectric itself
reaches 500 dB/km.
ii. Large dispersion causes distortion of transmission along optical fibers, e.g. it
broadens transmitted pulse and finally overlaps it with its neighbors.
(b) Dielectric thin-film waveguide supported by a frame (1965)
(c) Lens array waveguide (1962-64) and gas lens waveguide (1964-65)




1.2.6 Optical fiber came forth

Reliable information transfer using light wave can be achieved via dielectric
waveguides or glass optical fibers to avoid degradation of the optical signal by the
atmosphere. Proposal for telecommunication with optical fibers were made in 1966 by
Kao and Hockham. They analyzed various causes of light loss in glass and showed that
low-loss optical fibers for telecommunications could be fabricated through improving
technologies. They also discussed a structure of core-cladding with minute difference in
refractive index (named weakly guiding fiber in 1970 by Gloge).
Technologies developed rapidly. In 1970 Corning Glass Works produced a silica
fiber with a signal-power transmission of better than 1% over a distance of 1 km (i.e., an
attenuation of 20 dB/km), which was comparable to existing copper electrical system.
During the next two decades, the transmission rose to about 96% over 1 km (i.e. an
attenuation of only 0.16 dB/km). Bell Laboratory developed a MCVD (chemical vapor
deposition) technology, which became a standard in optical fiber production.


1.3 Applications of optical fibers

Image Transport
Optical Communications
Optical Fiber Sensors
Medical applications

1.4 Advantages of optical communications

Comprehensive economic aspects
Enormous potential bandwidth frequency (~ 10
14
Hz) much higher than
micro-wave so that the available transmission bandwidth could be 10
4
larger (~ 3
GHz);
Low loss transmission Extremely low attenuation, minimum attenuation ~
0.2 dB/km c.f. 5-10 dB/km of the coaxial cables;
Small size and weight Extremely small fiber size (diameter ~ 100-150 m)
and ~ 30 g/km;
Ruggedness and flexibility good flexibility (bendable to mm curvature
radius);
Cheap and abundant material Made of quartz (SiO
2
, sand) instead of Cu.
Security
Electrical isolation (non-conductive, non-radiative and non-inductive) no
earth loop and interface problem; no effects of lightening, surge current, or
power cables on transmitting signals of light;
Immunity to interference and crosstalk free from electromagnetic
interference, crossing, disturbance fire (endure 1000C high temperature), no
spark.
Unparallel signal security The light from optical fibers does not radiate
significantly

Ultrapure glass fibers have become the premier communication medium.




1.5 The optical fiber communication system






First generation of optical fiber communication system
In 1977 field trails on optical fiber communications were held, and proved to be
very successful! Operating wavelength was ~0.8 m, 50 - 100 Mb/s, repeater spacing 10
km.
Around this time another major development: material dispersion in silica fiber is
zero at 1.3 m, with OH- free glass, attenuation ~ 0.5 to 1 dB/km at 1.3 m, and 0.2
db/km at 1.55 m.


Initially no laser and detector work at such wavelengths!


Second generation of optical fiber communication system
In 1980 key components operating at 1.3 m started appearing, and with
multimode fiber the bit rate is limited to 100 Mb/s (due modal dispersion in multimode
fiber) and the repeater spacing is ~ 20km.
1981 - laboratory demonstration of 2 Gb/s over 44 km of single mode fiber, and it
is clear that single mode fiber offers much wider bandwidth.
There was a worldwide rush to develop single mode fiber optic systems, with
monthly report of advances. Repeater spacing stretched from 30 km to 200 km, and bit
rate increased from 140 Mb/s to Gb/s.
1987 - second generation of 1.3 m fiber optic systems employing single mode
fibers, with bit rate up to 1.7 Gb/s and repeater spacing of 50km.


Third generation of optical fiber communication system
Repeater spacing is limited by the fiber loss (0.5dB/km at 1.3m). Since loss in
silica fiber is 0.2dB/km at 1.55m, there is an increased interest to operate at this
wavelength.
System development was delayed due to the large single mode fiber material
dispersion; the solution is to use either dispersion shifted fiber or single longitudinal
mode laser.
1985 - laboratory demonstration - 4Gb/s over 100 km
1990 - 2.4 Gb/s system is commercially available
Development of 10 Gb/s commercial system is underway.
The results are now history, and have led to dramatic simplification in the design
and implementation of inter-city systems, undersea systems of up to 200km long, trans-
oceanic fiber optic systems as well as massive reduction in the cost of traffic.


Fourth generation of optical fiber communication system
Increase in bit rate using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) or frequency
division multiplexing (FDM).
Increase in repeater spacing using optical amplification.
Coherent communication using homodyne or heterodyne detection system: first
demonstrated in 1981/82, showed that one could exploit the optical spectrum in an
analogous manner to that of the radio frequency. At 1.55m, a spectral width of 20000
GHz is available!
1990 - 2.5 Gb/s over 2223 km without repeaters, loss over fiber is compensated
by using optical fiber amplifiers every 80 km.
1991 - using conventional (non-coherent) technique, 2.5 Gb/s over 4500 km and
10 Gb/s over 1500km demonstrated. By using a recirculating loop - 2.4 Gb/s over 21000
km and 5 Gb/s over 14300 km.
Optical fiber amplifier provides trans-oceanic communication system of 9000-
10000 km without repeaters!


Fifth generation of optical fiber communication system
Soliton transmission - optical pulses that preserve their shapes during propagation
in a lossless fiber by counteracting the effect of dispersion through the fiber nonlinearity.
Basic idea proposed in 1973. Laboratory demonstration in 1988 over 4000 km of
fiber by compensating the fiber loss through Raman scattering.
Since 1989, all experiments use optical fiber amplifiers. 10 Gb/s over 1000 km
and 20 Gb/s over 350 km. By using recirculating loop, 2.4 Gb/s over 12,000 km.
Optical fiber communication systems: long term cost trends will favor the use of
fiber to the home for videophone, HDTV etc. Argument for and against such a
deployment depends primarily upon the political and commercial rather than the
scientific and technical aspect.
Development of Optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEIC's) will further reduces
the cost and makes deployment more cost effective.
Optical interconnects - optics is already tackling the backplane wiring problem.