Scribd
Upload
47 views

Attenuation in Optical Fibers: EE 230: Optical Fiber Communication Lecture 5

This document discusses various sources of attenuation or loss in optical fibers, including: 1) Absorption loss due to excitation of chemical bond vibrations, such as the OH bond vibration that causes a loss peak near 1400nm in silica fibers. Transition metal impurities can also cause broad absorptive losses. 2) Scattering loss from microscopic index variations, including Rayleigh scattering which scales with 1/λ4, and Mie scattering from dimensional inhomogeneities which depends on λ-2. 3) Bending loss caused when parts of the evanescent field radiate out of the fiber beyond a critical bending radius, affecting higher-order modes more than lower-order modes

Uploaded by

mofiw
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
47 views

Attenuation in Optical Fibers: EE 230: Optical Fiber Communication Lecture 5

This document discusses various sources of attenuation or loss in optical fibers, including: 1) Absorption loss due to excitation of chemical bond vibrations, such as the OH bond vibration that causes a loss peak near 1400nm in silica fibers. Transition metal impurities can also cause broad absorptive losses. 2) Scattering loss from microscopic index variations, including Rayleigh scattering which scales with 1/λ4, and Mie scattering from dimensional inhomogeneities which depends on λ-2. 3) Bending loss caused when parts of the evanescent field radiate out of the fiber beyond a critical bending radius, affecting higher-order modes more than lower-order modes

Uploaded by

mofiw
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 22

EE 230: Optical Fiber Communication Lecture 5

Attenuation in Optical Fibers

From the movie


Warriors of the Net

Attenuation/Loss In Optical Fibers


Mechanisms:
Bending loss

Power transmission is governed by the


following differential equation:

Absorption

dP
P
dz

Scattering loss

where is the attenuation coefficient


and P is the total power.
Pout (z)=Pinexp - Z

dBm refers to a ratio

is usually expressed in dB/km

with respect to a

(dB / km )

signal of 1 mW

Note that positive means loss

P
10
Log10 out 4.343
L
Pin

Bending Loss
Example bending loss
1 turn at 32 mm diameter
causes 0.5 db loss
Index profile can be adjusted to
reduce loss but this degrades
the fibers other characteristics
Rule of thumb on minimum
bending radius:
Radius>100x Cladding
diameter for short times
13mm for 125m cladding
Radius>150x Cladding
diameter for long times
19mm

This loss is mode dependent


Can be used in attenuators,
mode filters fiber identifier, fiber
tap, fusion splicing
Microbending loss
Property of fiber, under control
of fabricator, now very small,
usually included in the total
attenuation numbers
Fiber Optics Communication Technology-Mynbaev & Scheiner

Bending Loss in Single Mode Fiber

Bending loss for lowest order modes

Mode Field distributions in straight


and bent fibers
Microbending Loss Sensitivity vs
wavelength

Bending Loss
Outside portion of evanescent field has longer
path length, must go faster to keep up
Beyond a critical value of r, this portion of the
field would have to propagate faster than the
speed of light to stay with the rest of the pulse
Instead, it radiates out into the cladding and
is lost
Higher-order modes affected more than
lower-order modes; bent fiber guides fewer
modes

Graded-index Fiber
r
n r n1 1 2
a

For r between 0 and a. If =, the


formula is that for a step-index fiber
Number of modes is

2
akn1
M
2

Mode number reduction caused by


bending

N bent

2 2a 3

N straight 1

2 R 2n2 kR

2/3

Absorption
In the telecom region of the spectrum,
caused primarily by excitation of
chemical bond vibrations
Overtone and combination bands
predominate near 1550 nm
Low-energy tail of electronic
absorptions dominate in visible region
Electronic absorptions by color centers
cause loss for some metal impurities

Electron on a Spring Model

Response as a function of Frequency


Mechanical Oscillator Model

E-Field of a Dipole

Vibrational absorption
When a chemical bond is dipolar (one atom
more electronegative than the other) its
vibration is an oscillating dipole
If signal at telecom wavelength is close
enough in frequency to that of the vibration,
the oscillating electric field goes into
resonance with the vibration and loses energy
to it
Vibrational energies are typically measured in
cm-1 (inverse of wavelength). 1550 nm =
6500 cm-1.

Overtones and combination bands


Harmonic oscillator selection rule says that
vibrational quantum number can change by
only 1
Bonds between light and heavy atoms, or
between atoms with very different
electronegativities, tend to be anharmonic
To the extent that real vibrations are not
harmonic, overtones and combination bands
are allowed (weakly)
Each higher overtone is weaker by about an
order of magnitude than the one before it

Overtone absorptions in silica


Si-O bond fairly polar, but low frequency
01 at 1100 cm-1; would need six
quanta (five overtones) to interfere with
optical fiber wavelengths
OH bonds very anharmonic, and strong
01 at 3600 cm-1; 02 at 7100 cm-1;
creates absorption peak between
windows

Attenuation in plastic fibers


C-H bonds are anharmonic and strong,
about 3000 cm-1
First overtone (02) near 6000 cm-1
Combination bands right in telecom
region
Polymer fiber virtually always more
lossy than glass fiber

Absorptive Loss
Hydrogen impurity leads to OH bonds whose
first overtone absorption causes a loss peak
near 1400 nm
Transition metal impurities lead to broad
absorptions in various places due to d-d
electronic excitations or color center creation
(ionization)
For organic materials, C-H overtone and
combination bands cause absorptive loss

Photothermal deflection spectroscopy

Arc
lamp
Lock-in
amplifier
Chopper
Lens

HeNe

Detector
Sample
cuvette

Scattering loss: from index discontinuity


Scatterers are much smaller than the
wavelength: Rayleigh and Raman
scattering
Scatterers are much bigger than the
wavelength: geometric ray optics
Scatterers are about the same size as
the wavelength: Mie scattering
Scatterers are sound waves: Brillouin
scattering

Raman scattering
A small fraction of Rayleigh scattered
light comes off at the difference
frequency between the applied light and
the frequency of a molecular vibration
(a Stokes line)
In addition, some scattered light comes
off at the sum frequency (anti-Stokes)

Mie scattering from dimensional


inhomogeneities
Similar effect to microbending loss
Mie scattering depends roughly on -2;
scattering angle also depends upon
In planar waveguide devices,
roughness on side walls leads to
polarization-dependent loss

Teng immersion technique

Tunable IR laser

Chopper

Lock-in Amplifier

Detector

Motor stage

Intrinsic Material Loss for Silica

Rayleigh Scattering ~ (1/)4


Due to intrinsic index variations in amorphous silica

Spectral loss profile of a Single Mode


fiber
Spectral loss of single and Multi-mode
silica fiber

Intrinsic and extrinsic loss components for silica fiber

Fundamentals of Photonics - Saleh and Teich

You might also like