POWER BALANCE

CALCULATION
 POINT TO POINT LINK
Has transmitter on one end and receiver on the other
Design involves many interrelated variables among the
fiber, source and photodetector characteristics
Link design is an iterative process and some times it may
be required to relax the system requirements if these
cannot be met with the existing technology or are too
expensive
The main objective in the link design is to meet the system
requirements in a cost effective manner
 Where it is not feasible to transmit signals
directly from the point of origin to the final
destination, the total distance to be covered
is divided into several shorter paths in
tandem so that the transmission of adequate
quality can be achieved.
Each shorter path is connectd to the next
through a regenerative repeater
System requirements needed in the link design
are:

Data or bit rate / bandwidth

Bit error rate BER / signal to noise ratio S/N
Transmission distance or link length
 Basic issues involved in the link
design are:
Attenuation which determines the power
available at the photodetector input for a
given source power
Dispersion which determines the limiting
data rate or usable bandwidth
They are referred to as link power and time
budgets respectively
 Generally first the link power budget is
made and if found unsatisfactory, then some
component must be changed
Once established, the designer can prepare
time budget to ensure that the desired
overall system performance is achieved
Choice of fiber type depends on amount of
dispersion that can be tolerated and the
power to be coupled into the fiber
LEDs are generally used with MM fibers,
laser source can be used with both SM and
MM fibers
 In making the choice of photodetector,
minimum optical power required to satisfy
the BER requirement at the specified data
rate and receiver complexity are to be
considered
PIN detector is stable and simpler, but APD
has to be used when the received optical
power level is quite low
On the basis of the above considerations,
source, fiber and detector are tentatively
decided. Then the following procedure is
adopted
 POWER BUDGET
Required optical power level Pr at the receiver to
meet the system requirements, coupling losses etc.
is required to be given
An allowance has to be made for the degradation
of components with ageing, replacement,
variations due to temperature fluctuations,
imperfect repeatabillity on reconnection, field
repairs, maintenance, variations in drive condition
and so on
 A designer has to keep a safe margin to take
care of these factors
The loss model for a point-to-point optical
fiber link is shown
Lo is the factory unit length of fiber
L is the link distance
is the attenuation coefficient of fiber in
dB/km
Pt is the source output power dBm
Pr(min) is the minimum receiver power dBm
Lsf is the source to fiber coupling loss dB
 Splice loss:
Number of splices N = [ L/Lo] integer part
Fiber to fiber coupling loss Lff dB
Total splice loss is N. Lff dB
Fiber loss is .L
Fiber to detector coupling loss Lfd dB
 Power margin Pm = ( Pt - Pr(min)- Lsf - N. Lff
.L Lfd )dB
- A power margin Pm 4dB is acceptable otherwise
some components need to be upgraded
- With Pm <4dB, the system will become less
reliable
 Rise-time Budget
Objective of time budget is to ensure that the
system is able to operate properly at the desired
data rate
If the transmitter, fiber and receiver are considered
to have a Gaussian impulse response with rms
pulse widths tx, f and rx respectively, the
overall system response will also be Gaussian with
a rms pulse width
sys = (tx + f + rx )
 As a safety margin, it is usually taken to be
10% higher than the above value
System time budget is considered to be
satisfactory if sys does not exceed 1/4R
where R is the data rate
 Transmitter
Depend on the electronic components of
driving circuit and electrical parasitics
associated with the optical source
It is few nanoseconds for LED based
transmitter, but can be as short as 0.1ns for a
laser based transmitter
Presuming an exponential rise and decay,
tx is nearly equal to half of the rise time
 Receiver rise time
The receiver rise time trx is determined by
3dB electrical bandwidth of the receiver
front end
trx = 0.35/B where B is the
bandwidth
rx is determined from rise time like that
of the transmitter
 Fiber RMS Dispersion
The rms pulse width of the fiber f includes
the contributions of both modal and
material dispersion through the relation
f = ( mod + mat )
where mod and mat are the rms pulse
widths due to modal and material
dispersions of the fiber respectively
 In the absence of mode mixing, mod for SI
fibers is mod = n1L/23c
For GI fibers, mod = n1L/203c
The mat is approximately given by
mat = |Dmat| L where is the rms
spectral width of the source
Maximum link length calculation
 When a particular set of components meets the design
requirements, one would like to know the maximum
distance up to which these components could be used
If the link length is quite large, it will help in determining
the repeater location
The maximum link length is determined presuming that
link is attenuation limited and there is no dispersion effect
And again when the link is dispersion limited and no
attenuation effect
Minimum of the two is taken as the maximum practicable
link length
The maximum data rate that can be transmitted over an
optical fiber system is given by R = 1/4sys
 Design Problem1
Design an optical fiber link for a length 2.9km and
data rate of 90 Mbit/s. The required BER is 10-
9. Available components are:
a) Laser at 850nm; rms spectral width 1nm, optical power
output 0dBm; transmitter rise time 2ns
b) LED at 850 nm; spectral width 50nm; optical power
output 13dBm; transmitter rise time 15ns
c) n1 = 1.43, = 0.015;
Fiber GI type;
4dB/km, Dmat = 70ps/nm.km at 850nm;
unit factory length 1km
 PIN photodiode receiver of sensitivity at
R=90Mbit/s is 30.3dBm
APD receiver with sensitivity better than
PIN sensitivity by 11dB at the same data
rate and BER. Take receiver rise time with
either PIN or APD to be 1ns
 Design Problem 2
Q: An optical communication link is to be designed for
a data rate of 100 Mbit/s, BER10-9 and link length
540km. The available components are:
(a) Laser at 1300 nm; rms spectral width 3nm; optical power
output 5dBm; transmitter rise time 2ns
(b) Fiber SI-SM type, n1 = 1.43; = 0.0037; =0.6dB/km;
Dmat=3.2ps/(nm.km) at 1300nm; L0=3km
(c) For signal detection either a PIN photodiode or an APD
receiver can be used. The PIN has sensitivity of (-
36.8dBm). Risetime 1ns. APD sensitivity is 45.3dB.
Risetime 1ns.
(d) Lsf=1dB, Lff=0.1dB, Lfd = 0.2dB