4 Experiment O1: Physical Characteristics of Optical Fibers

Jasmine Roberts, Columbia University

Aim: The purpose of this lab is to observe the physical characteristics of optical bers based on length of the cables and wavelength of light that propagates through the cable. Methods: In the rst part of the lab a PIN rotation mechanism was used to plot intensity versus angle of the red LED emission that propagates through cables of different lengths. The angle attained is the angle of rotation to the normal. This is done for ber optic cable lengths of .1, .5, 1, 2, 4, and .15 meters. Using these plots the numerical aperture will be found. In the second part of the lab we observe the absorption and diffusion of two different wavelengths across different ber optic cable lengths. An LED was attached on one end and the photo detector on the other end of the ber optic cable. The voltage used in this part was obtained from a point where the device was not in saturation. The plot made was done to plot Vout versus optic cable length. The cable lengths used for this piece were .1, .5, 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 meter bers. This process was done twice, rst using a red LED, and then using an infrared LED. Using these two plots we will obtain the attenuation coefcient and injection loss of each LED as a parameter dependent on the cable length. Results: Numerical Aperture, Attenuation coefcient, and injection loss will be obtained from the data. The voltage used in this part was obtained from a point where the device was not in saturation. Numerical aperture is said to be ninety percent of our plot of the rotational angle versus intensity. The numerical aperture represents the range of angles that a system can accept or emit light. Of our numerical apertures obtained, the .1 meter ber optic cable had the highest. The attenuation coefcient and injection loss were achieved from our plots of cable length vs. output voltage. The voltage used in this part was obtained from a point where the device was not in saturation. The plot made shows Vout versus optic cable length. The plot shows that as the cable length gets longer the output voltage decreases. The plot is transformed to t a logarithmic scale, the slope and y-intercept are obtained which represents the attenuation coefcient and the injection loss respectively. General Terms: Fiber optics, Optical Systems Additional Key Words and Phrases: numerical aperture, attenuation coefcient, injection loss

1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. Fiber Geometry

Optical bers are a kind of waveguide, which are usually made of some type of glass, are in contrast to other waveguides, fairly exible. The most commonly used glass is silica due to its favorable properties, particularly its potential for extremely low propagation losses (the importance of which will be discussed in the report). In laser optics, bers have a core with a refractive index which is somewhat higher than the surrounding medium. Typical core diameters range from 4 to 8 m for single-mode bers used for communications and from 200 to 1000 m for large-core bers used in power transmission applications. The transition of the optical parameters from the core to the cladding can be discontinuous (step-index ber) or smooth (grade-index ber). The

Fig. 1. Fiber Optic Numerical Aperture Geometry

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Fig. 2. Numerical Aperture Measurement Method

index contrast between core and cladding determines the numerical aperture of the ber.
2. NUMERICAL APERTURE

Numerical aperture, NA, is dened as the sine of half the angle of a bers light acceptance cone. All modes of light entering the ber at angles less than that which correspond to the NA, will be bound or conned to the core of the ber. The larger the NA of a ber, the larger the light acceptance cone. NA is determined from the measurements of the far-eld optical power distribution exiting from a two-meter length of ber. A narrow emission pattern is more desirable for an LED in a ber optic communication system, because material dispersion in the bers cause different optical wavelengths to travel at different speeds. Thus, a narrower emission pattern would be less lossy. If the NA of the LED was much larger than the equilibrium value of the NA in the ber, the incident angle of some of the light would be under the critical angle of the ber, causing this light to be transmitted through the optical interface in the ber and lost to cladding. This would be undesirable in a situation requiring minimal loss. An LED with a wide emission pattern would be useful when the use of lters to display different colors was desired. An LED with a wide emission pattern would be useful for a demonstration of dispersion. By holding up a glass prism to an LED with a broad spectrum, one could take note of the separate optical wavelengths that would appear.
2.1. Measurement Description

This measurement method is adopted from a Corning R method.[3] The measurement consists of launching a narrow spectral band of light into the ber and measuring the far-eld intensity distribution emitted from the end of the ber with the indicated optics. The detector and detector aperture are stepped linearly across the far-eld distribution and the intensity, at a distance y from the axis of the spatial eld pattern, is measured. The detector and aperture are moved linearly across a transformed spatial representation of the far eld and not radially across the direct far-eld. Therefore, the
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Fig. 3. Numerical Aperture Calculation Results

angular intensity is corrected by the following equation: I () = E (y )cos() (1) y = distance from axis of spatial-eld pattern and is related to the emission angle () by y = f sin(), where f is the focal length of the transform lens E (y ) = irradiance at a distance y from the axis of the spatial-eld pattern () = angle with respect to axis of the ber The data is normalized to the peak angular intensity and plotted versus emission angle (). The spatial distance between the 5 % shall be noted and the sine of the half angle between the points represents the numerical aperture. 1 and 2 were determined by linear interpolation. x = x1 + y y1 ( x2 x1 ) y2 y1 (2)

Materials with broad absorption are used to relax the spectral requirements on diode-pumped laser systems, and to minimize the need to regulate temperature. While is retains the advantages of a semiconductor light emitter, the spectrum can be tailored or tuned to a variety of illumination applications e.g. a uorescent microscope. If the PIN detector were on the rotator and the ber were stationary, the results would be the same. This is because when the ber is rotating, the distance from the ber to the detector remains the same; the only difference is the angle, and this would be maintained if the detector were on the rotator. The difference between the expected value for the polished ber and the measured unpolished value can be explained by the fact that an unpolished ber causes incident light to the ber to be diffused, losing some light as a result.
3. LINEAR ATTENUATION

Attenuation, in ber optics, also known as transmission loss, is the reduction in intensity of the light beam (or signal) with respect to distance travelled through a transmission medium. Attenuation coefcients in ber optics use units of db/m through the
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Fig. 4. Emission Spectra for bers (a) FL RED (b) 0.5m (c) 1m (d) 2m
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Fig. 5. Emission Spectra for (a) 4.0m and (b) unpolished bers & Output v. Fiber Length for plotted for a RED LED on (c) Normal and (d) Logarithmic Scales

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Fig. 6. Output v. Fiber Length for plotted for an Infrared LED on (c) Normal and (d) Logarithmic Scales

medium due to the relatively high quality of transparency of modern optical transmission media. Attenuation can be quanties by the following equation: Attenuation (dB ) = 10 log10
3.1. Measurement Description

Input Intensity (W ) Output Intensity (W )

(3)

Insertion or Injection Loss. In any ber optic interconnection, some loss occurs. Insertion loss for a connector or splice is the difference in power that you see when inserting the device into the system. For example, taking a length of ber and measuring the optical power through the ber. Note the values. The difference between the rst reading (P1 ) and the second (P2 ) is the insertion loss, or the loss of optical power that occurs when you insert the connector into the line. This is measured as: IL(dB ) = 10 log10 (
P1 P2

P2 ) P1

(4)

Vin can be obtained by the ratio of V . Since Power = (Voltage)(Current), current is conout Vin 2 stant throughout the circuit, therefore ( P P1 ) ( Vout ) /bfFrom the slope and y-intercept, the attenuation coefcient and injection loss were determined to be -.2677 and 4.6231

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respectively for the red LED. The attenuation coefcient and injection loss were determined to be -.3414 and 2.0354 respectively for the infrared LED. The two attenuation versus distance curves can be assumed to be somewhat accurate. There could be other differences in the bers contributing to the obtained values. For example, some of the bers may have lost some of the incident light because they were not polished as well as others. Impurities and inhomogeneities within the bers could also be causes of attenuation. The 940 nm measurements show much more attenuation as length increases. The main source of ber loss at 940 nm is due to absorbing elements, including metal ions and OH ions. This is also a major source of loss at 660 nm, but diffusion losses due to Rayleighs law also have a signicant effect.
4. CONCLUSION

Numerical aperture (NA) represents the range of angles that a light can be taken and emitted. The F.1 meter cable had the highest numerical aperture for the system. The unpolished ber optic cable had the lowest numerical aperture, despite the length of the cable being the second smallest of the group (.15 meters). This shows that whether the cable is unpolished or polished, it plays a greater role than the actual length of the cable. This happens because the unpolished end will cause great dispersion of the light, which means numerical will be drastically reduced. The output voltage decreases in a system as the length of the optical cable gets longer. The slope and y-intercept are obtained which represents the attenuation coefcient and the The red LED has a larger attenuation coefcient and injection loss compared to the Infrared LED.
5. REFERENCES

Z. Valy Vardeny. Telecommunications: A Boost for Fibre Optics, Nature 416, 489491, 2002. [2] Fibre Optics. Bell College. Archived from the original on 2006-02-24. [3] Numerical Aperture Measurement Method http://course.ee.ust.hk/elec342/readings/corningnumericalaperturemeasurement.pdf [4] Introduction to Optical Fibers, dB, Attenuation and Measurements. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk482/tk876/technologiestechnote09186a008011b406.shtml [5] Hecht, Eugene. Optics. Pearson Education. San Francisco, 2002.
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