Signal degradation in optical

fibers
Attenuation

Dispersion
 Causes of attenuation
Absorption
Linear scattering
Nonlinear scattering
Fiber bending losses
 Intrinsic and Extrinsic
Absorption
Propagating light interacts with fiber material
Energy absorbed by electrons, later on released as light or
heat energy is removed from signal and given up later in
some other form
Intrinsic absorption is associated with the basic fiber
material
It occurs even when the material is in perfect state with no
density variations, impurities, material inhomogeneities
and so on
It sets the fundamental lower limit on absorption for any
material
 Extrinsic absorption

Dopants and transitional metal impurities such as

iron, chromium, cobalt, copper etc., absorb IR
radiations
Transitional metal impurities in the starting
material in the range of 1 to 10 ppb cause losses
between 1dB/km to 10 dB/km
Early fibers had high levels of OH ions, resulting
peak absorption at 1.4um and 0.95um and 0.74um
At present, fibers with a loss of 0.18dB/km and
0.17dB/km are available for 1550nm
 Linear scattering
Causes the transfer of some or all of the
optical power contained within one mode to
be transferred linearly in to a different mode
Attenuation results if the new mode is a
radiation mode
No change in frequency
Linear scattering mechanisms
Rayleigh scattering
Mie scattering
 Rayleigh scattering
Results from inhomogeneities of a random nature
occurring on a small scale compared with the
wavelength of the light
Inhomogeneities causes fluctuations in refractive
index
Causes are density and compositional variations
which are frozen into the glass lattice on cooling
Scattering almost in all directions
 Mie scattering
Occur due to inhomogeneities which are
compareable in size to the guided wavelength
Results from the imperfect cylindrical structure,
the irregularities in the core cladding interface,
core-cladding refractive index difference along the
fiber length, diameter fluctuations, strains and
bubbles
Scattering is in forward direction
 Non linear scattering losses
At higher power levels, losses varies nonlinearly
with input power
Causes power from one mode to be transferred in
either forward or backward directions to the same
or other modes at a different frequency
Depends upon optical power density within the
fiber and significant above threshold power levels
 Stimulated Brillouin Scattering
SBS
Incident photon produces a phonon of
accoustic frequency as well as a scattered
photon
This produces an optical frequency shift
Frequency shift is maximum in the
backward direction, reducing it to zero in
the forward direction
 Stimulated Raman Scattering
SRS
Similar to SBS except that a high frequency
optical phonon rather than an accoustic
phonon is generated in the scattering
process
SRS occur in both the forward and
backward directions in an optical fiber
Threshold optical power for SRS is more
than SBS
 Fiber bend losses
Optical fiber suffer radiation losses at bends or
curves on their paths
The part of the mode which is on the outside of
the bend is required to travel faster than that on the
inside so that the wavefront perpendicular to the
direction of propgn is maintained.
Part of mode in the cladding needs to travel faster
than the velocity of light in that medium. Since it
is not possible, energy associated with this part of
the mode is lost through radiation
 Signal Distortion
Due to inter-modal dispersion and
intramodal delay effects
Can be explained by examining the
behaviour of the group velocities of the
guided modes, where the group velocity is
the speed at which energy in a particular
mode travels along the fiber
 Intramodal dispersion or
chromatic dispersion
Pulse spreading occurs within a single mode
Arises from the finite spectral emission
width of an optical source
Main cause of dispersion in SM fibers
 Material dispersion
Arises from the variation of the RI of the core
material as a function of wavelength
Light sources are not monochromatic and produce
a band of wavelengths
Different wavelength components of the light
pulse will travel at different speeds
It broadens the pulse as it travels along the fiber
It tends to zero in 1.3um region and this is the
region where attenuation is low. Hence 1.3um
became a very popular wavelength for OFC
 Intermodal dispersion
Pulse broadening due to intermodal
dispersion results from the
propagation delay difference
between modes wthin the MM fiber
Pulse contains different modes
traveling with different group
velocities
Pulse width at the output is
dependent upon the transmission
times of the slowest and the fastest
modes