1. Optical Fiber Communications
Fall: 2015
Instructor: Dr. Amin Alqudah
Textbook: Gerd Keiser, “Optical Fiber Communications”, McGrawHill, 2000, 3rd edition.
Exams: First :25%
Second :25%
Final :50%

2. Content 1- Overview of Optical Fiber Communications
2- Optical Fiber: Structures, Waveguiding, and Fabrication
- Single Mode Fiber
- Fiber Materials & Fabrication Procedures
3- Signal Degradation in Optical Fibers
4- Optical Sources: LED & Laser Diodes
5- Power Launching & Coupling
6- Photodetectors
7-Optical Receivers
8-Digital Transmission systems
9- Analog Systems
10- WDM Concepts and Components
11- Optical Amplifiers
12- Optical Networks

3. Chapter 1 Overview of Optical Fiber Communications

4. Optics
Optics is an old subject involving the generation, propagation & detection of light.
Three major developments are responsible for revolution of optics & its application in modern technology:
1- Invention of Laser
2- Fabrication of low-loss optical Fiber
3- Development of Semiconductor Optical Device
As a result, new disciplines have emerged & new terms describing them have come into use, such as:
- Electro-Optics: is generally reserved for optical devices in which electrical effects play a role, such as lasers, electro-optic modulators & switches.

5. Optical Fiber Communications
The scope of Optical Fiber Communications:
1- Generation of Light
2- Transmission of Light (through free space, fibers, imaging systems,, … )
3- Processing of Light Signals (modulation, switching, amplification, frequency conversion, …)
4- Detection of Light (coherent & incoherent)
Optical Fiber Communications: describes the applications of Optical technology in communication devices & systems, such as transmitters, transmission media, receivers & signal processors.

8. Why Optical Fiber Communications?
Extremely wide bandwidth: high carrier frequency ( a wavelength of nm corresponds to a center frequency of THz!) & consequently orders of magnitude increase in available transmission bandwidth & larger information capacity.
Optical Fibers have small size & light weight.
Optical Fibers are immune to electromagnetic interference (high voltage transmission lines, radar systems, power electronic systems, airborne systems, …)
Lack of cross talk between channels
Availability of very low loss Fibers (0.25 to 0.3 dB/km), high performance active & passive photonic components such as tunable lasers, very sensitive photodetectors, couplers, filters,
Low cost systems for data rates in excess of Gbit/s.
Security
Long Distance transmission

9. Disadvantages of Optical Fiber Communications
1. High initial cost
The initial cost of installation or setting up cost is very high compared to all other system.
2. Maintenance and repairing cost
The maintenance and repairing of fiber optic systems is not only difficult but expensive also.
3. Jointing and test procedures
Since optical fibers are of very small size. The fiber joining process is very costly and requires skilled manpower.
4. Tensile stress
Optical fibers are more susceptible to buckling, bending and tensile stress than copper cables. This leads to restricted practice to use optical fiber technology to premises and floor backbones with a few interfaces to the copper cables.
5. Short links
Even though optical fiber cables are inexpensive, it is still not cost effective to replace every small conventional connector (e.g. between computers and peripherals), as the price of optoelectronic transducers are very high.
6. Fiber losses
The amount of optical fiber available to the photodetector at the end of fiber length depends on various fiber losses such as scattering, dispersion, attenuation and reflection.

10. BW demands in communication systems
Type & applications
Format
Uncompressed
Compressed
Voice, digital telegraphy
4 kHz voice
64 kbps
16-32 kbps
Audio
16-24 kHz
kbps
kbps (MPEG, MP3)
Video conferencing
or frames/s
Mbps
64 kbps Mbps (H.261 coding)
Data transfer, E-commerce,Video entertainment
1-10 Mbps
Full-motion broadcast video
frames/s
249 Mbps
2-6Mbps (MPEG-2)
HDTV
frames /s
1.6 Gbps
19-38 Mbps (MPEG-2)

11. Early application of fiber optic communication
Digital link consisting of time-division-multiplexing (TDM) of 64 kbps voice channels (early 1980).

12. SONET & SDH Standards
SONET (Synchronous Optical NETwork) is the network standard used in north America & SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) is used in other parts of the world. These define a synchronous frame structure for sending multiplexed digital traffic over fiber optic trunk lines.
The basic building block of SONET is called STS-1 (Synchronous Transport Signal) with Mbps data rate. Higher-rate SONET signals are obtained by byte-interleaving N STS-1 frames, which are scramble & converted to an Optical Carrier Level N (OC-N) signal.
The basic building block of SDH is called STM-1 (Synchronous Transport Module) with Mbps data rate. Higher-rate SDH signals are achieved by synchronously multiplexing N different STM-1 to form STM-N signal.

13. SONET & SDH transmission rates
SONET level
Electrical level
Line rate (Mb/s)
SDH equivalent
OC-1
STS-1
51.84 -
OC-3
STS-3
155.52
STM-1
OC-12
STS-12
622.08
STM-4
OC-24
STS-24
STM-8
OC-48
STS-48
STM-16
OC-96
STS-96
STM-32
OC-192
STS-192
STM-64
Optical Fiber communications, 3rd ed.,G.Keiser,McGrawHill, 2000

14. Evolution of fiber optic systems
1950s:Imaging applications in medicine & non-destructive testing, lighting
1960s:Research on lowering the fiber loss for telecom. applications.
1970s:Development of low loss fibers, semiconductor light sources & photodetectors
1980s:single mode fibers (OC-3 to OC-48) over repeater sapcings of 40 km.
1990s:Optical amplifiers (e.g. EDFA), WDM (wavelength division multiplexing) toward dense-WDM.
Optical Fiber communications, 3rd ed.,G.Keiser,McGrawHill, 2000

15. Operating range of 4 key components in the 3 different optical windows
4 key components : Source, detector, cable, amplifier
Amplifiers: GaAlAs, InGaAsP (material, ) device : PDFA, EDFA
EDFA: Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers
PDFA: Praseodymium-doped fiber amplifiers
Responsivity: Responsivity measures the input–output gain of a detector system. In the specific case of a photodetector, responsivity measures the electrical output per optical input.
The responsivity of a photodetector is usually expressed in units of either amperes or volts per watt of incident radiant power.
GaAlAs: Gallium-aluminum-arsenide (GaAlAs)
InGaAsP: Indium gallium arsenide phosphide
InGA Indium gallium arsenide
Optical Fiber communications, 3rd ed.,G.Keiser,McGrawHill, 2000

16. Major elements Of typical Optical Fiber Communication link
Splicer: connector
A fiber optic coupler is a device used in optical fiber systems with one or more input fibers and one or several output fibers.
Optical Fiber communications, 3rd ed.,G.Keiser,McGrawHill, 2000

17. Installation of Fiber optics
Optical Fiber communications, 3rd ed.,G.Keiser,McGrawHill, 2000

18. WDM Concept
Optical Fiber communications, 3rd ed.,G.Keiser,McGrawHill, 2000

19. Optical Fiber communications, 3rd ed.,G.Keiser,McGrawHill, 2000