1. EE 230: Optical Fiber Communication Lecture 17
System Considerations
From the movie
Warriors of the Net

2. Basic Network Topologies

3. Bitrate Distance Graph for various point to point link technologies

4. System Design Determine wavelength, link distance, and bit-error rate
Work out power budget
Work out risetime budget
Work out cost budget

5. Power Budget Steps
Start with BER and bit rate, determine B based on coding method
B = 1/2RC gives the maximum load resistance R based on B and C
Based on R and M, determine detector sensitivity (NEP), multiply by B1/2
Add system margin, typically 6 dB, to determine necessary power at receiver

6. Power budget steps, continued
Add power penalties, if necessary, for extinction ratio, intensity noise (includes S/N degradation by amplifiers), timing jitter
Add loss of fiber based on link distance
Include loss contributions from connections and splices
End up with required power of transmitter, or maximum length of fiber for a given transmitter power

7. Power budget example
Imagine we want to set up a link operating at 1550 nm with a bit rate of 1 Gb/s using the RZ format and a BER of We want to use a PIN photodiode, which at this wavelength should be InGaAs. The R0 for the diode is 0.9 A/W.

8. Bandwidth required for bit rate
For NRZ format, B=0.5 times bit rate
For RZ format, B=bit rate
For this example, the bandwidth B is equal to the bit rate, 109 /s.

9. Bandwidth limit C=2 pF for this photodiode.
B = 1/2RC, so the load resistance R must be (2BC)-1 = 79.6 

10. Noise Equivalent Power (NEP)
Signal power where S/N=1
Units are W/Hz1/2
In this case, M=1 and the dark current = 4 nA.
The factor outside the radical is 1/R0. We can thus determine the NEP, which is 5.1x10-7 W, which equals dBm.

11. Q Factor and BER
For our BER of 10-9, Q=6 and S/N=12

12. Extinction ratio penalty
Extinction ratio rex=P0/P1
If our extinction ratio is 0.1, the penalty is 0.87 dB.

13. Intensity noise penalty
rI=inverse of SNR of transmitted light
Since our S/N is 12, rI=0.83, which leads to a power penalty of 1.25 dB

14. Timing jitter penalty
Parameter B=fraction of bit period over which apparent clock time varies
If our jitter represents 10% of the bit period, the power penalty is 0.34 dB

15. Fiber attenuation
If the attenuation in the fiber is 0.2 dB/km and the link is 80 km long, the total loss in the fiber will be 16.0 dB

16. Example results Minimum power required for receiver: -33.0 dBm
Safety margin: 6.0 dB
Extinction ratio power penalty: dB
S/N power penalty: dB
Timing jitter power penalty: dB
Fiber loss over 80 km: dB
Total= minimum transmitter power=
-8.54 dBm=0.14 mW=140 W

17. Further steps
Alternatively, previous data could be used with a fixed transmitter power to determine maximum length of a fiber link
If power budget does not add up, one can
replace PIN photodiode with APD
add an EDFA to the link

18. Power Budget Example

19. Risetime Budget

20. Rise time budget components
bit rate and coding format determine upper limit of rise time
rise time of transmitter (from manufacturer; laser faster than LED)
pulse spread due to dispersion
rise time of receiver (from manufacturer; PIN faster than APD)
Rise time components are combined by taking the square root of sums of squares

21. Upper limit for rise time
For NRZ format, Tr=0.70/B
For RZ format, Tr=0.35/B
In this case, choose RZ format. Tr must thus be less than or equal to 0.35/109 = 350 ps

22. Group Velocity Dispersion-based rise time
Calculate from laser optical bandwidth if known, or from modulation rate:
In this case, D=17 ps/nm-km, L=80 km, and =0.016 nm, so tf=21.8 ps.

23. Modal dispersion rise time
For multimode fiber, time spread due to modal dispersion is based on core index and fiber length L.
For step-index fiber:
For graded-index fiber:

24. Total rise time
For this example, tMD=0, tTR=100 ps, tRC=0.5 ns, and tGVD= 21.8 ps as before. tr is therefore 510 ps, and the rise time budget does not meet the limit.
Can use NRZ format
Use faster detector or transmitter
Use graded-index fiber for less dispersion

25. Computer Based Link Simulation
Computer Simulation is often used to model opticla links to account for the complex interaction between components and nonlinear effects
Commercial simulation tools are now available such as:
Linksim from RSoft
and the tools from VPI Systems
Fiber-Optic Communication Systems-G. Agrawal