Chapter 7: System Design

Consideration
1. Link Power Budget (Attenuation)
2. Bandwidth Budget (Dispersion)

Optical transmitter-receiver circuit

Optical power-loss model for a point-to-

point link. The losses occur at connectors,

at splices and in the fiber.

Transmission attenuation
The transmission attenuation is the total (in

dB) between two given interfaces.

Transmission attenuation
Example of attenuation to be considered in

a fiber optic point-to-point link.

Link power budget

The optical power received at PD depends

on the amount of light coupled into the

fiber and the losses occurred in the fiber
and at the connectors and splices.
The link loss budget derived from the
sequential loss contributions of each
element in the link.
Each of these loss elements is expressed in
decibels (dB) as
where Pin and Pout are the optical power
emanating into and out of the loss element,

Power margin
A link power margin is usually provided in

the analysis to allow for component aging,

temperature fluctuations, and losses.
Typical power margin of 6 to 8 dB is used
for the system which is not expected to
have additional update in the future.

Link loss budget

Link loss budget is the total optical power

loss, PT that is allowed between the light

source and photodector.
If Ps is the optical power emerging from the
end of the fiber flyleads attached to the
light source and PR is the receiver
sensitivity, then:Where is the connector loss, is the fiber
attenuation (dB/km), L is the transmission
distance and the system margin is normally
taken as 6 dB.

Power budget (summary)

A systematic method to design an optical

link with respect to attenuation can be

summarize in the following way.

Design example
A data rate of 20 Mbps and a bit error rate of 10 -9 is

used. For the receiver, a silicon pin photodiode

operating at 850 nm is chosen. From the receiver
sensitivities vs bit rate graph, the required input signal
is -42 dBm (42 dB below 1 mW). A GaAlAs LED which
can couple a 50 W (-13 dBm) average optical power
level into a fiber flylead with a 50 m core diameter.
Calculate the allowable power loss in the system.
Assume further that a 1 dB loss occurs when the fiiber
flylead is connected to the cable and another 1 dB loss
occurs at the cable-to-photodetector interface.
Including a 6 dB system margin and fiber attenuation
of 3.5 dB/km, evaluate the possible transmission
distance?

Receiver sensitivities vs bit rate

Example
A fiber link includes five splices at 0.02

dB/splice, four connectors at 0.2

dB/connector, transmitter power of -10
dBm, and receiver sensitivity of -25 dBm.
Compute the length of the fiber that should
be used if single mode fiber cable with
attenuation of 0.3 dB/km is chosen and the
required power margin is 3 dB.

Bandwidth

Maximum bit rate

Bandwidth and bit rate

Bandwidth-length product
The longer the fiber length involved, the

greater the dispersion.

Dispersion or pulse broadening is specified as
ns or ps per km
Bandwidth-length product is a figure of merit
for comparing different systems. Units are
rate/bit rate
typically MHz.km orData
GHz.km
Electrical
Optical
Summary ofDispersion
BR/BW relation:Rectangula
r shape
pulse
Gaussian
shape
pulse

Problem

Problem solution

Rise time budget

Rise-time budget analysis is used to

determine the dispersion limitation of an

optical fiber link.
In this approach, the total rise time, tsys of
the link is the root-sum-square of the rise
times from each contributor to the pulse
rise-time degradation.
For non-return-to-zero (NRZ) data,
For return-to-zero (RZ) data,
where R is the data rate/bit rate.

Rise time budget

The rise time budget is assemble as:-

where is transmitter rise time (light source),

is the fiber rise time which consist of total
dispersion rise time for a given fiber and is
receiver rise time (photodiode).
Recall that:where is the 3dB electrical bandwidth of the
receiver.

Total dispersion rise time,

The
pulse broadening in the multimode index fiber

can be obtained as below:-

tf

2
mod al

2
chrom

where is a modal dispersion and is a chromatic

dispersion. Note that the is the sum of material and
waveguide dispersion and can also be found using
However, the rise time of modal dispersion
calculation and analysis in multimode fiber
become more complicated.

Modal dispersion rise-time,

A variety of empirical expression for modal dispersion

have been developed. From practical field experience, it

has been found that the bandwidth, in the link of length L
can be expressed to a reasonable approximation by the
empirical relation:-

where the parameter q ranges between 0.5 and 1, and is

the bandwidth of a 1-km length cable. A value of q=0.5
indicates that the steady-state modal equilibrium has been
reached, whereas q=1 indicates little mode mixing. The
reasonable estimate is q=0.7.
For 3-dB optical bandwidth of the fiber link and letting be

the modal dispersion rise time, then:-

Design example
Continue from the previous example. Assume that the

LED with its drive circuit has a rise time of 15 ns.

Taking a typical LED spectral width of 40 nm, we have
material dispersion related rise time degradation of
21 ns over 6 km link. Assuming the receiver has a 25
MHz bandwidth, then the contribution to the rise-time
degradation from the receiver is 14 ns. If the fiber we
select has a bandwidth of 400 MHz.km bandwidthdistance producta nd with q=0.7, then the modal
dispersion induced fiber rise time is 3.9 ns. Compute
the link rise time budget and verify whether the
chosen components are adequate to support the
required bit rate of 20 Mbps.

Example
A local data link to be installed has the

following characteristics; maximum bit rate

32 Mbps; line code NRZ; fiber 62.5/125 m;
installation length, 2km; operating
wavelength 1300 nm; rise time of light
wave equipment, 4 ns and LD spectral
width of 2 nm. Will this fiber support the
required bit rate?