Fiber-Optic Communications Systems, Third Edition. Govind P. Agrawal Copyright 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

. ISBNs: 0-471-21571-6 (Hardback); 0-471-22114-7 (Electronic)

Appendix C

General Formula for Pulse Broadening

The discussion of pulse broadening in Section 2.4 assumes the Gaussian-shape pulses and includes dispersive effects only up to the third order. In this appendix, a general formula is derived that can be used for pulses of arbitrary shape. Moreover, it makes no assumption about the dispersive properties of the ber and can be used to include dispersion to any order. The basic idea behind the derivation consists of the observation that the pulse spectrum does not change in a linear dispersive medium irrespective of what happens to the pulse shape. It is thus better to calculate the changes in the pulse width in the spectral domain. For pulses of arbitrary shapes, a measure of the pulse width is provided by the quantity 2 = t 2 t 2 , where the rst and second moments are calculated using the pulse shape as indicated in Eq. (2.4.21). These moments can also be dened in terms of the pulse spectrum as t = t2 i 2 1 = t 2 |A(z, t )|2 dt 2 t |A(z, t )|2 dt

(z, )A (z, ) d , A (z, )|2 d , |A

(C.1) (C.2)

(z, ) is the Fourier transform of A(z, t ) and the subscript denotes partial where A such derivative with respect to . For simplicity of discussion, we normalize A and A that 1 |A(z, t )|2 dt = |A(z, )|2 d = 1. (C.3) 2 As discussed in Section 2.4, when nonlinear effects are negligible, different spectral components propagate inside the ber according to the simple relation (0, ) exp(i z) = [S( )ei ] exp(i z), (z, ) = A A (C.4)

where S( ) represents the spectrum of the input pulse and ( ) accounts for the effects of input chirp. As seen in Eq. (2.4.13), the spectrum of chirped pulses acquires 524

APPENDIX C. GENERAL FORMULA FOR PULSE BROADENING

525

a frequency-dependent phase. The propagation constant depends on frequency because of dispersion. It can also depend on z when dispersion management is used or when ber parameters such as the core diameter are not uniform along the ber. If we substitute Eq. (C.4) in Eqs. (C.1) and (C.2), perform the derivatives as indicated, and calculate 2 = t 2 t 2 , we obtain
2 2 = 0 + [ 2 2 ] + 2[ ],

(C.5)

where the angle brackets now denote average over the input pulse spectrum such that f = 1 2

f ( )|S( )|2 d .

(C.6)

In Eq. (C.5), 0 is the root-mean-square (RMS) width of input pulses, = d /d , and is the group delay dened as

( ) =

L 0

(z, ) dz

(C.7)

for a ber of length L. Equation (C.5) can be used for pulses of arbitrary shape, width, and chirp. It makes no assumption about the form of (z, ) and thus can be used for dispersion-managed ber links containing bers with arbitrary dispersion characteristics. As a simple application of Eq. (C.5), one can use it to derive Eq. (2.4.22). Assuming uniform dispersion and expanding (z, ) to third-order in , the group delay is given by 2 ( ) = (1 + 2 + 1 (C.8) 2 3 )L. For a chirped Gaussian pulse, Eq. (2.4.13) provides the following expressions for S and : S( ) = 4 T02 2 T02 exp , 1 + C2 2(1 + C 2)

( ) =

C 2 T02 tan1 C. 2(1 + C 2)

(C.9)

The averages in Eq. (C.5) can be performed analytically using Eqs. (C.8) and (C.9) and result in Eq. (2.4.22). As another application of Eq. (C.5), consider the derivation of Eq. (2.4.23) that includes the effects of a wide source spectrum. For such a pulse, the input eld can be written as A(0, t ) = A0 (t ) f (t ), where f (t ) represents the pulse shape and A 0 (t ) is uctuating because of the partially coherent nature of the source. The spectrum S( ) now becomes a convolution of the pulse spectrum and the source spectrum such that S( ) = 1 2

S p ( 1 )F (1 ) d 1 ,

(C.10)

where S p is the pulse spectrum and F ( s ) is the uctuating eld spectral component at the source with the correlation function of the form F (1 )F (2 ) s = G(1 ) (1 2 ). (C.11)

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APPENDIX C. GENERAL FORMULA FOR PULSE BROADENING

The quantity G( ) represents the source spectrum. The subscript s in Eq. (C.11) is a reminder that the angle brackets now denote an ensemble average over the eld uctuations. The moments t and t 2 are now replaced by t s and t 2 s where the outer angle brackets stand for the ensemble average over eld uctuations. Both of them can be calculated in the special case in which the source spectrum is assumed to be Gaussian, i.e., 1 2 exp 2 , (C.12) G( ) = 2 2 where is the RMS spectral width of the source. For example, t
s

( ) |S( )|2 s d i

S ( )S ( s d (C.13)

=L

2 2 (1 + 2 + 1 2 3 )|S p ( 1 )| G(1 ) d 1 d

Since both the pulse spectrum and the source spectrum are assumed to be Gaussian, the integral over 1 can be performed rst, resulting in another Gaussian spectrum. The integral over is then straightforward in Eq. (C.13) and yields t
s

= L 1 +

3 2 (1 + C2 + V ) , 2 8 0
s,

(C.14) we recover Eq. (2.4.13)

where V = 2 0 . Repeating the same procedure for t 2 for the ratio / 0 .