INTRODUCTION

This Assignment report demonstrates the basic features of a typical Wavelength Division
Multiplexed (WDM) optical communication system and shows the basic design steps with
OptiSystem 7.

In this assignment we will develop a simple WDM communication system. The performance of
the system will be shown and compared with results. The impact of various physical effects
accompanying the light propagation in optical fibers on the signal transmission will be analyzed.
In this report, we begin the analysis of a multi-channel system by starting with the analysis of a
simple one-channel system.

Single-channel transmission

Figure 1 shows the layout that we use to analyze the performance of such a system. The layout is
followed with detailed explanations of its components.

Figure 1: Single channel system layout

The three main blocks of each communication system shown in Figure 1 are the transmitter, the
optical span, and the receiver.

Transmitter

The process of converting the digital data stream (a sequence of logical ones and zeros) into
sequence of light pulses (where the presence of the pulse corresponds to one and the absence
of a pulse corresponds to zero) is known as modulation. At bit rates as high as 40 Gb/s
(considered here) the direct switching on and off the laser (known as direct modulation) is
impossible due the transient effects taking place within the laser. Therefore, we use external
modulation, which means that the laser will operate in a continuous wave mode and an external
device (the modulator), will convert the data into a sequence of pulses.

Figure 2: Transmitter subsystem layout

The laser is considered as ideal, so its line-width is set to zero. The phase-deviation parameter of
phase modulator is set to 180. The 10 sequence is used in the User- defined bit sequence
generator. The modulator has three stages. After each stage, the modulation formats known as
NRZ (non-return-to-zero), RZ (return-to-zero) and CSRZ (carrier-suppressed-return-to-zero)
modulation formats are produced.

The graphs produced by the time- and frequency-domain visualizers after the first, and second
stage, are shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4.

Figure 3: NRZ time- and frequency-domain visualizers

Figure 4: RZ time- and frequency-domain visualizers

We can convert each of the modulators into a subsystem, which is convenient for the further
design. These subsystems are shown in Figure 5 and Figure 6.

Figure 5: NRZ subsystem design

Figure 6: RZ subsystem design

Optical Span

The next step was to design the transmission span. The transmission span that we use consists of
a 50km long Single mode optical fiber.

Receiver

Figure 9 shows the receiver that we use. It consists of a PIN photo-detector, fourth order lowpass Bessel electrical filter with 32 GHz (0.8 *Bit rate) cut-off frequency and a BER Analyzer
with its default settings kept. The thermal noise of the photo-detector is not taken into account.

Figure 7: Receiver layout

In our case, no special calibration of the receiver was performed. The impact of the receiver
calibration on the system performance estimation can be eliminated by using the eye closure
penalty instead of the Q-factor as a measure of the system performance. The receiver calibration
however can be performed by sweeping the thermal noise parameter until a given value of the Qfactor is achieved at a specified input power level.

Wavelength Division Multiplexing

Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) is one of the most popular fiber optic techniques
which multiplex many signals with different wavelength to transmit over the network on single
fiber. At the receiver end of the link, a demultiplexer separates the wavelength and routes them
into different fiber. Figure 8 shows the basic configuration of a WDM system.

Figure 8. WDM System

Instead of using time division multiplexing (TDM), which only used a single wavelength of light
on single optical fiber, we replace TDM with WDM system to make full use of fiber bandwidth.
WDM system implementation has help to improve the existing internet infrastructure as it
capable of providing high speed of internet with high data capacity in excess of hundreds of
gigabit per second for a long distance communication in a single mode fiber.
In WDM system, data is transmitted in term of light by using fiber optic which added more
advantage to WDM system. This is because the signal is immune to interference and crosstalk
and it also provide more security as light does not radiate from the fiber, it is impossible to tap
into it secretly without detection compared with other data transmission systems.

SYSTEM DESIGN
The figure below shows the design of a 8 channel optical communication system. This system
was designed and simulated using OptiSystem 7.0.

Figure 9 : Proposed 8 Channel WDM System.

RESULTS, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

Figure 10 below depicts the output at the multiplexer. Here we see eight spicks corresponding to
the eight different wavelenghts which propergate through the fiber. Figure 11 shows the bit error
rate analiyer reading at the reciver.

Figure 10 : Output at Multiplexer measured with a spectrum analyzer

Figure 11 :The Bit Error Rate Analyzer reading at each receiver

Power Budget
The allocation of available optical power among many types of loss-producing
mechanisms available at the receiver is called the optical power budget in a fiber-optic
communication link. The examples of such mechanisms are launch-coupling loss, fiber
attenuation, splice losses and connector losses. The attenuation in optical power budget is
specified in decibels while for the optical power is in dbm.
The amount of optical power launched into a given fiber by a given transmitter depends
on the nature of its active optical source and the type of fiber, including parameters as core
diameter and numerical aperture.
The minimum average power required by the receiver is the receiver sensitivity. The
average launch power is generally specified for each transmitter with optical powers expressed in
dbm.
To calculate the power budget formula, the equation is followed as below:

Power budget =

Ptx
Pmin(Prx)

Power budget (dB) = Ptx(dB) Pmin(dB)

For 8 channel system with 2.5Gbit/s:
Ptx = 35dB and Prx = 20dB
Power Budget = 15dB.

Rise Time Budget

Time taken of the system to gain 90% of the steady state response of the system from the
initial state to the input state is what we called the rise time budget. The rise time of a system has
a different value from its bandwidth. For example, a system with infinite bandwidth has zero rise
time. However for optical systems, it has finite bandwidth so there is a non-zero rise time value.
The rise time of a system determines the speed of the device and also indicates the maximum
possible frequency of variations in the input signal that the system can produce a reliable output.

Since, the optical transmitter, optical receiver and the optical channel maybe assumed to be
individual systems, they have individual rise times which may be different and there is always a
need to synchronize the three so that the system as a whole operates on the desired data rate of
transmission with best possible performance of the system as a whole. Rise time analysis gives
the best bandwidth of the optical link. The calculation is as shown below:
System Rise Time:

[ ]
n

t sys=

t2
i =1

1/2
i

By assuming that silica optical fiber is used in our system, the rise time has a value of 8nS and a
spectral width of 40nm at an operating wavelength of 840nm. The detector has a rise time of
10nS. For silica M=95.2Ps/(nm.km). For a 90km link, the intermodal dispersion of graded index
fiber is 3.5nS/km. Thus, the calculation is as below:
Rise time of source = 8nS.
Rise time of detector = 10nS.
Material dispersion:
t mat =M 2. 2. L 2=95.2 40 90=342.7 nS .
t mod =3.5 90=315 nS .
System Rise Time:
1 /2

t sys=[ ttx 2+ trx2 + M 2 . 2 . L2+ tmod ]

1 /2

t sys=[ 82 +102 +342.7 2+315 2 ] nS=465.65 nS .

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENTS

The above simulated design is a basic 8 channel WDM system; however there are various other
equipment and modulation techniques that can be used to obtain better performance with the
system.
For example, the optical span can be further improved with the use of cells for dispersion
compensation. At bit rates as high as 40 Gb/s, the design of the cell is crucial. The dispersion
length at 1.55 micrometers, assuming standard single-mode fibers (SMF), and Gaussian pulses
with 0.5 duty ratio is of the order of 3 km the period of the cell is 50 km (the length of the
dispersion compensating fiber (DCF) is not included). This means that during the propagation,
within one cell, not only is there a strong overlap between the adjacent pulses, but the original bit
stream will be totally scrambled due to the dispersion-induced pulse broadening. This regime of
propagation known as pulse-overlapped is of very high practical importance, since in this case
the impact of the nonlinear effects taking place due to the interaction of the overlapping pulses
that belong to one and same information channel (known as intra-channel nonlinearities) are
reduced. The concept involves spreading of the pulses as far as possible and as quickly as
possible in the time domain in order to create a rapidly varying intensity pattern, in order to
combat the impact of the nonlinearity.

Figure 11 :The Bit Error Rate Analyzer reading

The gain of the EDFA placed after each fiber is such that it compensates the losses of the
preceding fiber.