Optical Fiber Communications

Optical Sources

Dr R.S Kaler
Senior Professor
 Optical Sources

 Optical Sources: Tungsten, Deuterium, Mercury, Hollow Cathode Lamp

 Optical Sources specifically suited to FO systems are:

 Light Emitting Diode (LED)
 Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation (LASER)

 Suitable for fiber transmission system because they have adequate output power for a
wide range of applications.

 Applications in the area of medical, automotive, analytical equipments, communications

and industry.
 Requirements of Optical Sources for Communication

 Linearity (output light power proportional to driving current)

 Narrow radiation pattern (beam width)
 Ability to be directly modulated by varying driving current
 Fast response time
 Adequate output power into the fiber
 Narrow spectral width (or line width)
 Stability and efficiency
 Reliability and Cost
 Review of Semiconductor Physics: Energy Bands
The concentration of electrons and holes is known as the intrinsic carrier concentration n i ,and for a perfect
material with no imperfections or impurities it given by:

Energy level diagrams showing the excitation of an electron from Equal electron & hole concentrations in an intrinsic
the valence band to the conduction band. The resultant free semiconductor created by the thermal excitation of
electron can freely move under the application of electric field . electrons across the band gap
 n-Type Semiconductor

(a) Donor level in an n-type semiconductor.

(b) The ionization of donor impurities increases the electron concentration distribution in the conduction band.
 p-Type Semiconductor

a) Acceptor level in an p-type semiconductor.

b) The ionization of acceptor impurities creates an increased hole concentration distribution
 Intrinsic & Extrinsic Materials
• Intrinsic material: A perfect material with no impurities.
2
pn  ni
• Extrinsic material: donor or acceptor type semiconductors.

• Majority carriers: electrons in n-type or holes in p-type.

• Minority carriers: holes in n-type or electrons in p-type.

• The operation of semiconductor devices is essentially based on the injection

and extraction of minority carriers.
 The pn Junction

Electron diffusion across a pn junction creates a barrier potential (electric field) in the depletion region.
 Reverse and Forward biased pn Junction

 A reverse bias widens the depletion region, but allows minority carriers to move freely with the applied field.
 Lowering the barrier potential with a forward bias allows majority carriers to diffuse across the junction
 Direct and Indirect Band Gap
 Direct Band Gap: Recombination
process where the electron and hole
have the same momentum value

 Indirect Band Gap: Band to band

recombination involve a third particle
to conserve momentum

a) Electron recombination and the associated

photon emission for a direct band gap material

b) Electron recombination for indirect band gap

materials requires a phonon of energy E ph and
momentum kph.
 LED
Light is emitted at site of carrier recombination which is primarily close to the junction

• Emits incoherent light through spontaneous emission

• Used for Multimode systems with 100-200 Mb/s rates

• Broad spectral width and wide output pattern

• 850nm region: GaAs and AlGaAs

• 1300–1550nm region: InGaAsP and InP

 LED Structure
 Hetrojunction consists of two adjoining
semiconductor materials with different band
gap energies.
 The light emitting region consists of a pn
junction constructed of direct band gap III-V
semiconductor materials.

a) Cross-section drawing of a typical GaAlAs double

heterostructure light emitter. In this structure,
x>y to provide for both carrier confinement and
optical guiding.

b) Energy-band diagram showing the active region,

the electron & hole barriers which confine the
charge carriers to the active layer.

c) Variations in the refractive index; the lower

refractive index of the material in regions 1 and 5
creates an optical barrier around the waveguide
because of the higher band-gap energy of this
material.
 Surface-Emitting LED

The active region is limited to a circular cross section that has an area compatible with the fiber-core end
face.
 Edge-Emitting Double Heterojunction LED

The output beam is lambertian in the plane of junction (Өǀǀ = 1200 ) and highly directional perpendicular to pn
junction(Ө┴ ~300). They have high quantum efficiency & fast response.
 Light Source Materials
 Ga1 x Alx As By varying x it is possible to control the band-gap
energy and thereby the emission wavelength over the range of 800 nm to
900 nm. The spectral width is around 20 to 40 nm.
In1 x Ga x Asy P1 y
 By changing 0<x<0.47; y is approximately 2.2x, the
emission wavelength can be controlled over the range of 920 nm to 1600
nm. The spectral width varies from 70 nm to 180 nm when the
wavelength changes from 1300 nm to 1600 nm. These materials are
lattice matched.

 Using quantum mechanical relationship between energy E and frequency

ν is:

 Then the peak emission wavelength is: Band gap energy and output wavelength as a
function of aluminum mole fraction x for
AlxGainxAs at room temperature.
 The energy gap in electron volts for values of x between zero and 0.37 Most of the light sources contain III-V ternary &
(the direct band gap region) can found from empirical equation: quaternary compounds.
 Light Source Materials

 Spectral emission pattern of a representative  Relationship between the crystal lattice spacing,
Ga1-x Alx As LED with x=0.008 energy gap and diode emission wavelength at room
 The width of spectral pattern at its half power temperature
points is know as full width half maximum  The shaded area is for the quaternary alloy InGaAsP
(FWHM)  The star * is for In0.8 Ga0.2 As0.35 P0.65 (Eg =1.1ev)
 This FWHM spectral width is 36ns lattice matched to InP
 Light Source Materials
Table 1: Bandgap energies of some common semiconductor materials
Semiconductor Bandgap Energy(eV)
material
Silicon(Si) 1.12
GaAs 1.43
Germanium 0.67
InP 1.35
Ga0.93Al0.03As 1.51

Table 2: Typical characteristics of surface and edge emitting LEDs

LED Type Material Wavelength(nm) Operating Fiber-coupled Nominal FWHM

current (mA) power (μW) (nm)
SLED GaAlAs 850 110 40 35
ELED InGaAsP 1310 100 15 80

SLED InGaAsP 1310 110 30 150

 Quantum Efficiency and LED Power
• When there is no external carrier injection, the excess density decays exponentially due to
electron-hole recombination. where : n0 : initial injected excess electron density
n  n0 e  t /  : carrier lifetime.
n : is the excess carrier density

• Rate equation for carrier recombination

dn J n in an LED can be written as:
 
dt qd 

• The internal quantum efficiency

Rr is:  nr 
int   
Rr  Rnr  r   nr  r

• Optical power generated internally where :

I in the active
hcIregion in the LED is:
Pint  int h  int Pint : Internal optical power,
q q
I : Injected current to active region
 Quantum Efficiency and LED Power

The external efficiency can then be calculated from the

expression is:

c
1
 ext 
4  T ( )(2 sin  )d
0

4n1n2
T ( ) : Fresnel Transmissi on Coefficien t  T (0) 
(n1  n2 ) 2

1
If n2  1  ext 
n1 ( n1  1) 2
Pint
LED emitted optical power, P   ext Pint 
n1 (n1  1) 2 Only light falling within a cone defined by the critical angle
will be emitted from an optical source
 Modulation of an LED
• The frequency response of an LED depends on:
1- Doping level in the active region
2- Injected carrier lifetime in the recombination region, .
3- Parasitic capacitance of the LED

• If the drive current of an LED is modulated at a frequency of the output


optical power of the device will vary as: P( )  P0 1  ( ) 2 1/ 2 
• The ratio of outpute power at zero modulation is: electrical power at frequency
ω to the power at zero modulator is Ratio 
: elec  10log  p( )   I 2
() 
  10 log  2 
 p ( 0)   I (0) 
p : electrical power, I : electrical current
 Modulation of an LED
I(ω) is the electrical current in the detection circuitry. The
electrical 3dB points occurs at that frequency point where
detected power p(ω)=p(0)/2. this happen when:

 I 2 ( )  1
 2 
 I ( 0)  2

Detected current is directly propositional to optical power,

this ratio is:

 P ( )   I ( ) 
Ratio optical  10 log    10 log  
 P ( 0)   I ( 0 ) 
The optical 3dB points occurs at that frequency where the Frequency response of an optical source showing
ratio of current is equal to 1/2 . the electrical and optical 3dB bandwidth points
 Modulation of Laser Diodes
 Internal Modulation: Simple but suffers from non-linear effects.
 External Modulation: for rates greater than 2 Gb/s, more complex, higher performance.
 Most fundamental limit for the modulation rate is set by the photon life time in the laser cavity:
1 c 1 1  c
  
 ln   g th
 ph n 2 L R1 R2  n

In a pulse modulated laser, if the laser is completely turned

off after each pulse, after onset of the current pulse, a time
delay, given by:
 Ip 
td   ln  
 I p  ( I B  I th ) 

Another fundamental limit on modulation frequency is the

relaxation oscillation frequency given by:
1/ 2
1 1  I 
f    1
2  sp ph  I th 
Figure shows the Example of the relaxation
oscillation peak of a laser diode
 Line Coding
 In designing a communication link for transporting digitized information, a significant
consideration is format of the transmitted digital signal.
 The signal format is important because to receiver must be able to extract precise timing
information from the incoming signal.
 Three main purpose of timing are:
– To allow the signal to be sampled by the receiver at the time the signal to noise ratio is
a maximum
– To maintain a proper spacing between pulses
– To indicate the start and end of each timing interval.
 These timing and error minimizing features can be incorporated into the data by
reconstructing or encoding the digital signal.
 This process is called channel coding or line coding.
 NRZ & RZ Signal Format And Block Codes
 Simplest method for encoding data is the unipoloar nonreturn to zero (NRZ) code.
 In unipolar format:
– Logic ‘1’ is represented by a voltage or light pulse that fills an entire bit period.
– Logic ‘0’ no pulse transmit
 Return to zero pulse nominally occupies exactly half a bit period electronic digital transmission system in an optical
communication link the RZ pulse might occupy only a fraction of bit period.

Block codes:
Introducing redundant bit into a data streams can be
used.
mBnB block codes is used for encoding method.
The condition for this method is n>m

NRZ and RZ code patterns for the data sequence 1010110

Thanks