By Maichl

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 To give an overview on what and why fiber optic communication
 Assess impact of fiber optic communication in our daily life
 Define basic terminologies, historic perspectives and evolution of
fiber optic communication

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Lecture Outline
Basic concepts of optical communication
History of optical communication systems
Fiber optic communication systems
Fiber optic communication generation
Summary

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 Fiber-optic communication is method of transmitting
information from place to place by sending pulses of
light through an optical fiber.
 It is the transmission of signal using light which
propagates to a medium called fiber optic.
 To understand how the optical transmission works in
communication system , basic understanding on
optical parameters , profiles , and types are
necessary.

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 The process of communication using fiber-optics involves
the following basic steps:
• Creating the optical signal with a transmitter
• Relaying the signal along the fiber,
• Ensuring that the signal doesn’t become too distorted.
• Receiving the optical signal and converting to electrical
signal.

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History of Fiber Optic Communication

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 A. Advantages:
• Fiber optic cables have much greater bandwidth than metal cables.
• Fiber optic cables has less weight and size than copper wire cable.
• Because no electricity is passed through optical cable it is non-
flammable and immune to lightning.
• It is free from RFI, EMI and EMP since optical fibers are made from
dielectric waveguide and thus there is no interference or crosstalk.
• Transmission loss is very low ( 0.2 dB/km).
• Optical fibers provide very secured data transmission than copper cables
thus it is attractive for Military, Banking and general data transmission.
• Data can be transmitted digitally.

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 Optical fiber is good for maximum system reliability and ease
of maintenance.

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1. Large Bandwidth
 Bandwidth of optical fiber is in order of Multi-Giga Hertz
 Optical carrier frequency range: 104GHz to 107GHz
 Coaxial cable Bandwidth is up to 500 MHz
 Millimeter radio wave bandwidth is up to 700 MHz

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2. Small Physical Size
• Fiber Clad Diameter:50 μm to 400μm
• Fiber Core Diameters: 0.5 μm to 200μm
• Cable Diameter:0.5” to 2.5”
3. Light Weight
• Light Glass or plastic material
• Light Plastic or Kevlar outer jacket
• A few grams per meter
4. Electrical Isolation
• Material: Glass or Plastic (Electrical Insulator)
• No earth loop problem
• No interface problem
• No short-circuits and sparks
• Suitable for electrically hazardous environment (shocks,
explosives)

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5. Immunity to Interference
 Optical Fiber is Dielectric Waveguide owing to its
glass material
• Free from Electromagnetic Interference (EMI)
• Free from Radiofrequency Interference (RFI)
• Free from Electromagnetic Pulses (EMP) due to
switching transients
• Operation unaffected in electrically noisy environments
• Require no shielding
• Susceptible from lightning strikes
• No optical interference between fibers even if many
fibers are in the same cable
• No electrical signals and no cross talk 16
6. Signal Security
• No optical radiation leakage
• Optical signal cannot be tapped-out without cutting the fiber
(there by shutting down/interrupting the link)
• Eavesdropping is minimized
7. Low Transmission Loss
• ITU-T Recommendation G.651 for 850 nm: 4-8 dB/km Practical
range obtained:2-4 dB/km
• ITU-T Recommendation G.651 for 1310 nm:1-2 dB/km Practical
range obtained: 1-1.5 dB/km
• ITU-T Recommendation G.651 for 1550 nm:0.5-1 dB/km
Practical range obtained:0.2-0.15 dB/km
• Thus:
• Bandwidth and transmission distance is increased
• Due to lower transmission losses, repeater spacing are increased.
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Low Transmission Loss

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8. Ruggedness
• Cable has very high tensile strength
• Tough cross-section
9. Flexibility
• Can be bend or twisted to very small radii without
damage

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10. Reliability
• Simpler equipment
• Fewer equipment including repeaters (sometimes no
repeaters)
• Very-low noise and interference environment
• Higher bandwidths
• Better physical properties of optical fiber medium
• Higher mean time before failure (MTBF)
• Hence more reliable systems

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11. High-Quality Transmission
• BER: Typically for optical fiber medium
• BER: Typically for copper and microwave
media
12. Environmental Stability
• Retention of transmission characteristics under
environmental stresses
• Low temperatures effects in attenuation for optical fiber,
while in copper cables temperature has continuous
effects.
• Lower corrosion rates such as under water than copper
(which also suffers performance degradation)

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B. Disadvantages
• Fiber optics cables are expensive to install.
• The termination of fiber optics cable is complex
and requires special tools.
• They are more fragile() than coaxial cable
1. Radiation Hardness
• Fiber darkens to some degree when bombarded by
high energy radiations
2. Nonconductor
• Cannot transmit electric power for energizing
telecomm equipment

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3. Bend Strength
• Lower bend strengths: cables are generally designed to
avoid this situation
4. Hydrogen Absorption
• H2 molecules can be absorbed and diffused in silica
fibers and produce attenuation
5. Line Transmission (Guided Medium)
• Optical fiber communication is not a wireless system
and there is always an optical fiber cable between
transmitters and receivers.
5. Effects of Moisture
• Moisture is the factor that most severely degrades
performance of optical fibers in signal transmission by
largely increasing attenuation.
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 Factor Affecting Performance of Optical Fiber Transmission
 Attenuation
 Material Absorption
• Intrinsic absorption
• Extrinsic absorption
 Scattering
• Linear scattering
• Rayleight scattering
• Mie scattering
• Non-Linear Scattering
• Stimulated Brillouin scattering
• Stimulated Raman scattering.
 Dispersion
• Intra-modal Dispersion: Material dispersion and waveguide Dispersion
• Intermodal dispersion

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Frequency Transmission Window
• Each effect that contributes to attenuation and
dispersion depends on the optical wavelength.
• The wavelength bands that exist where these effects
are weakest ,the most favorable for transmission.
• These windows have been standardized and the
currently defined bands are the following.

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Optical Parameters

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 Window : is defined as the range of wavelength
within which a fiber best operates for optical
transmission
Color Wavelength Frequency
• Violet 380–450nm 668–789THz
• Blue 450–495nm 606–668THz
• Green 495–570nm 526–606THz
• Yellow 570–590nm 508–526THz
• Orange 590–620nm 484–508THz
• Red 620–750nm 400–484THz

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Wavelength : is a characteristic of light that is
emitted from the light source and is measured
in(Nanometers nm).

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5. Fifth Generation late90s -early2000

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Thank u!!

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