Transmission Characteristics

of Optical Cable
Transmission Characteristics of Optical Fiber: Attenuation, absorption, linear
and nonlinear scattering losses, bending losses, dispersion, Chromatic
dispersion, Intermodal dispersion , Over all dispersion in single mode and
multimode fibers, dispersion shifted and dispersion flattened fibers, OTDR.
Non-linear effects, scattering effects, Kerr effects, soliton

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Signal Distortion in Optical Fiber Cable
• Attenuation
• Distortion

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Attenuation

Attenuation

Absorption Micro-bending Scattering Loss

wavelength of the
light and the
characteristics of
particular glass

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Attenuation
• Attenuation is a measure of decay of signal strength or loss of light power that occurs as light
pulses propagate through the length of the fiber.
• In optical fibers the attenuation is mainly caused by two physical factors absorption and
scattering losses. Absorption is because of fiber material and scattering due to structural
imperfection within the fiber. Nearly 90 % of total attenuation is caused by Rayleigh scattering
only.
• Micro-bending of optical fiber also contributes to the attenuation of signal.
• The rate at which light is absorbed is dependent on the wavelength of the light and the
characteristics of particular glass. Glass is a silicon compound, by adding different additional
chemicals to the basic silicon dioxide the optical properties of the glass can be changed.
• The Rayleigh scattering is wavelength dependent and reduces rapidly as the wavelength of the
incident radiation increases.
• The attenuation of fiber is governed by the materials from which it is fabricated, the
manufacturing process and the refractive index profile chosen. Attenuation loss is measured in
dB/km.

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Attenuation Units

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Attenuation calculations

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Absorption
• Absorption loss is related to the material composition and fabrication
process of fiber.
• Absorption loss results in dissipation of some optical power as heat
in the fiber cable.
• Although glass fibers are extremely pure, some impurities still remain
as residue after purification.
• The amount of absorption by these impurities depends on their
concentration and light wavelength.

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Absorption

Absorption

Intrinsic
Extrinsic absorption
Atomic Defects in absorption by
by impurity atom in
glass composition basic constituent
glass material
of fiber material

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Absorption by Atomic Defects
• Atomic defects are imperfections in the atomic structure of the fiber materials such as missing
molecules, high density clusters of atom groups.
• These absorption losses are negligible compared with intrinsic and extrinsic losses

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Extrinsic Absorption
• Extrinsic absorption occurs due to electronic transitions between the
energy level and because of charge transitions from one ion to
another.
• A major source of attenuation is from transition of metal impurity
ions such as iron, chromium, cobalt and copper.
• These losses can be up-to 1 to 10 dB/km. The effect of metallic
impurities can be reduced by glass refining techniques.

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Extrinsic Absorption
• Another major extrinsic loss is caused by absorption due to OH (Hydro-xil) ions
impurities dissolved in glass.
• Vibrations occur at wavelengths between 2.7 and 4.2 µm.

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Intrinsic Absorption
• Intrinsic absorption occurs when material is in absolutely pure state, no density variation
and material is homogenous.
• Thus intrinsic absorption sets the fundamental lower limit on absorption for any
particular material.
• Intrinsic absorption results from electronic absorption bands in UV region and from
atomic vibration bands in the near infrared region.
• The electronic absorption bands are associated with the band gaps of amorphous glass
materials.
• Absorption occurs when a photon interacts with an electron in the valence band and
excites it to a higher energy level.
• UV absorption decays exponentially with increasing wavelength (λ).
• The inherent IR absorption is due to interaction between the vibrating band and the
electromagnetic field of optical signal this results in transfer of energy from field to the
band, thereby giving rise to absorption, this absorption is strong because of many bonds
present in the fiber

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Intrinsic Absorption

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Rayleigh Scattering Losses
• Scattering losses exists in optical fibers because of microscopic variations in the
material density and composition.
• As glass is composed by randomly connected network of molecules and several
oxides (e.g. SiO2, GeO2 and P2O5), these are the major cause of compositional
structure fluctuation.
• These two effects results to variation in refractive index and Rayleigh type
scattering of light.
• Rayleigh scattering of light is due to small localized changes in the refractive index
of the core and cladding material.

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Rayleigh Scattering Losses
• There are two causes during the manufacturing of fiber.

1. The first is due to slight fluctuation in mixing of ingredients. The

random changes because of this are impossible to eliminate
completely.
2. The other cause is slight change in density as the silica cools and
solidifies. When light ray strikes such zones it gets scattered in all
directions. The amount of scatter depends on the size of the
discontinuity compared with the wavelength of the light so the shortest
wavelength (highest frequency) suffers most scattering.

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Graphical relationship between wavelength and Rayleigh
scattering loss

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Scattering Loss

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Mie Scattering
• Linear scattering also occurs at in-homogenities and these arise from
imperfections in the fiber’s geometry, irregularities in the refractive
index and the presence of bubbles etc. caused during manufacture.
• Careful control of manufacturing process can reduce Mie scattering to
insignificant levels

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Bending Loss
• Losses due to curvature and losses caused by an abrupt change in
radius of curvature are referred to as ‘bending losses.
• Radiative losses occur whenever an optical fiber undergoes a bend of
finite radius of curvature.
• The sharp bend of a fiber causes significant radiative losses and there
is also possibility of mechanical failure.

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Bending Loss-

Types of the Bend

Macroscopic bends
(having radii that are
Random microscopic
large as compared
bends of fiber axis
with the fiber
diameter)

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Bending Loss

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Core and Cladding Loss
• Since the core and cladding have different indices of refraction hence
they have different attenuation coefficients α1 and α2 respectively.

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Signal Distortion in Optical Waveguide
• The pulse gets distorted as it travels along the fiber lengths.
• Pulse spreading in fiber is referred as dispersion.
• Dispersion is caused by difference in the propagation times of light
rays that takes different paths during the propagation.
• The light pulses travelling down the fiber encounter dispersion effect
because of this the pulse spreads out in time domain.
• Dispersion limits the information bandwidth.
• The distortion effects can be analyzed by studying the group velocities
in guided modes.

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Signal Distortion in Optical Waveguide
• Dispersion and attenuation of pulse travelling along the fiber is shown
in Fig.

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Group Delay

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Group Delay

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Dispersion

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Dispersion
• Material Dispersion/Chromatic Dispersion
• Waveguide Dispersion
• Modal Dispersion
• Polarization Mode Dispersion

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Material Dispersion

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Waveguide Dispersion

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Chromatic Dispersion

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Modal Dispersion

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Polarization Mode Dispersion

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar
Design Optimization
• Matched cladding fibers.
• Dressed cladding fibers.
• Dispersion Shifted Fiber
• Dispersion Flattened Fiber

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar
Fiber Non-linearity
• Self Phase Modulation (SPM)
• Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS)
• Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS).

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Kerr Effect
• Nonlinear Optics → light-matter interactions when material’s
response is a non-linear function of the applied electric-field. For a
nonlinear material, the electric polarization field will depend on the
electric field:
P = ϵ0χ (1)E + ϵ0χ (2)EE + ϵ0χ (3)EEE + · · ·,

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar

Step Index Fiber

02-03-2024 Dr. Anuja A Odhekar