Jimma University

Jimma Institute of Technology

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Communication Engineering Stream
Module 8
Optics and Optical Communication
Optical Link Design
SYSTEM CONSIDERATION
The design of a high-quality transmission link involves a series of tradeoffs among the many interrelated
performance variables of each component based on the system requirements.
System Requirements

The following key system requirements are needed in analyzing a link:

The transmission distance
The data rate or channel bandwidth
The Bit Error Rate (BER)
The number of WDM channels
The link Margin
Acceptabe power penalties

Link Margin

Link margin (also known as loss margin or a system margin) is an optical safety factor for link design. This
involves adding extra decibels to the power requirements to compensate for possible unforeseen link
degradation factors.
These degradations could arise from factors such as dimming of the light source over time, aging of other
components in the link, the possibility that certain splices or connectors in the actual link have a higher loss
than anticipated or additional losses occurring when a cable is repaired.
Designers typically add a link margin of 3 to 10 dB depending on the performance requirements of the
application, the number of possible repairs, and the system cost.

Power Penalty
It is a reduction in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the system. This happens when dispersions or
nonlinear effects contribute to signal impairment.
LINK POWER BUDGET
In carrying out a link power budget analysis, one first determines the power margin between the optical
transmitter output and the minimum receiver sensitivity needed to establish a specified BER
If the choice of components did not allow the desired transmission distance to be achieved, the components
might have to be changed or amplifiers might have to be in incorporated into the link
Steps in evaluating a power budget
1.

Decide at which wavelength to transmit and then select components that operate in that region. Example:
If the distance over which the signal is to be transmitted is not far (e.g. in a campus network) then operation
in the 800- to 900-nm region may be desirable to save on component cost. On the other hand, if the
transmission distance is relatively long and the bit rate is high, the lower attenuation and smaller dispersion
of the O-band (1260 to 1360 nm) or C-band (1530 to 1565 nm) may be more advantageous.

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2.

Interrelate the system performance of the three major optical link building blocks, that is, the receiver,
transmitter and optical fiber. Normally the designer chooses the characteristics of two of these elements
and then computes those of the third to see if the system performance requirements are met.

Power Budgeting Process

The link loss budget simply considers the total optical power loss that is allowed between the light source
and the photodetector and allocates this loss to factors such as cable attenuation, connector and splice losses, losses
in the other link components, and system margin.
For a hypothetical point-to-point link:

PT = PS - PR
= 2 x connector loss + L + N x splice loss + other losses + system margin
Where:

PT
PS
PR

= total optical loss

= optical power emerging from the end of a fiber lead attached to the source
= minimum receiver sensitivity needed for a specific BER
= fiber attenuation (dB/km)
= link length

Fast Ethernet LAN Example

A Fast Ethernet link is known as 100BASE-T link. Typically such a link is used in LAN and runs at 100
Mbps. Since the distance is short, we can use components operating at 850 nm, which are less expensive than
longer-wavelength devices. Suppose that two computers are to be connected by means of a 150-m fiber link length
that has been installed within a building and the fiber here is multimode fiber with a 50-m core diameter and has an
attenuation of 2.5 dB/km at 850 nm. The fiber ends are terminated in a connector in a patch panel. A 5-m patch cord
with connectors on both ends is used to connect each computer to this fiber line.
For this system, we assume the desired BER is 10 -9. For a silicon pin photodiode the required input
signal at the receiver at 100 Mbps is -32dBm inorder to have a BER = 10 -9 at 850 nm. Further assume that the
100BASE-T transmitter couples -20 dBm into the fiber and that each connector has a maximum loss of 0.7 dB.
Calculate for the LAN Link power Budget.
Component/Loss Parameter
Coupled LED output
pin sensitivity @100 Mbps
Allowed loss
Source connector loss
2 x Jumper connector loss
Cable attenauation (160m)
Receiver connector loss

Output/Sensitivity/Loss
- 20 dBm
- 32 dBm
- 0.7 dB
- 1.4 dB
- 0.4 dB
- 0.7 dB

Power Margin,
12
11.3
9.9
9.5
8.8 (final margin)

Assesment: The final power margin is 8.8 dB, which is a sufficient margin for the link.
Synchronous Optical Network (SONET)/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) Link Example
An engineer plans to design a 2.5-Gbps SONET OC-48 link over a 30-km path length. The basic
question is whether to operate at 1310 nm or to use more costly 1550-nm components. Therefore, the first step is to
calculate the 1310-nm power budget. The installed fiber at 1310 nm has an attenuation of 0.6 dB/km (0.3 dB/km at
1550nm). For the 30-km cable span, there is a splice with a loss of 0.1 dB every 5 km (a total of 5 splices). The
engineer selects a laser diode that can launch -2 dBm of optical power into the fiber and an InGaAs APD with a -32dBm sensitivity at 2.5 Gbps. Assume that here, because of the way the equipment is arranged, a short optical jumper
cable is needed at each end between the transmission cable and the SONET equipment rack. Assume that each
jumper cable introduces a loss of 1.5dB. In addition, there is a 0.6 dB connector loss at each fiber joint (two at each

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end because of the jumper cables for a total of four connectors). Calculate the link power budget and assess whether
the 1310-nm cable is viable.
Component/Loss Parameter
Coupled LED output
APD sensitivity at 2.5 Gbps
Allowed loss
Jumper cable loss (2x1.5dB)
Splice loss (5x0.1dB)
Connector loss (4x0.6 dB)
Cable attenuation (30 km)

Output/Sensitivity/Loss
- 2 dBm
- 32 dBm

Power Margin,
30.0
27.0
26.5
24.1
6.1 (final margin)

- 3 dB
- 0.5 dB
- 2.4 dB
- 18 dB

Assesment: The final power margin is 6.1 dB; therefore operation at 1310 nm is adequate in this case.
RISE-TIME BUDGET
A rise-time budget analysis is a convenient method for determining the dispersion limitation of an
optical link.
The five basic elements that may limit the speed significantly are:
Transmitter rise-time, tTX

Modal dispersion rise-time of multimode , tMOD

Chromatic dispersion rise-time, tCD

Polarization mode dispersion rise-time, tPMD

Receiver rise-time, tRX

2
2
2
2
2
t sys tTX
tmod
tCD
t PMD
t RX

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Note: Single-mode fibers do not experience modal dispersion (that is, tmod = 0, so in these fibers the rise
time is related only to CD and PMD.
Basic Rise Times

Generally, the total transition-time degradation tsys of a digital link should not exceed 70 percent of an NRZ
bit period or 35 percent for RZ data.
A rule-of-thumb estimate for the transmitter rise time is 2 ns for a light-emitting diode (LED) and 0.1 ns for
the diode laser source.
If BRX is given in MHz, then the receiver front-end rise time in nanoseconds is:

t RX

350
BRX

The fiber rise time tCD resulting from chromatic dispersion over a length L can be approximated by:
tCD DCD L

where: DCD = fiber chromatic dispersion

= half-power spectral width of the light source

If Bmod is the modal dispersion bandwidth (in MHzkm), then the modal rise time tmod (in nanoseconds) over
a fiber of length L km is given by:

440 L
, ns
Bmod
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The pulse spreading tPMD resulting from polarization mode dispersion is given by:

t PMD DPMD

fiber.length

where: DPMD = polarization mode dispersion measured in units of ps/km

Multimode LAN Link Rise Time
Example of LED-Based LAN Link:
The following components are used in the 160-m Fast Ethernet LAN link in the previous example about
power budget:
An LED with a 2.0-ns rise time and a 75-nm spectral width
A pin photodetector receiver with a front-end bandwidth BRX = 100MHz
A multimode fiber with DCD = -20ps/(nmkm) and Bmod = 400MHzkm at 850 nm
Using the equations indicated above yields: (verify the computation using the equations previously indicated)
t RX =3.5 ns

tCD =0.24 ns
tmod =0.18 ns

Then,

t sys (2.0) 2 (0.18) 2 (0.24) 2 (3.5) 2

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t sys 4.0ns
Since the Ethernet signal uses an NRZ format, the rise time needs to be less than 0.7 / (100 Mbps) = 7.0 ns.
Therefore, the rise time criterion is well satisfied.
Example of Maximum Length of Gigabit Ethernet Links
A LAN consists of Gigabit Ethernet links that VCSEL sources and 62.5-m fibers. Assume that the link
length is 220 m. Consider the following conditions:
A VCSEL, with a 0.1-ns rise time and a 1-nm spectral width
A pin photodiode receiver with a front-end bandwidth BRX = 1000 MHz
A multimode fiber with DCD = -20 ps/(nmkm) and Bmod = 160 MHzkm at 850 nm
Using the equations indicated above yields: (verify the computation using the equations previously indicated)
t RX = 0.35 ns

Then,

tCD = 0.01 ns
tmod = 0.60 ns

t sys (0.10) 2 (0.60) 2 (0.01) 2 (0.35) 2

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t sys 0.70ns
Since the Gigabit signal uses an NRZ format, the rise time needs to be less than 0.7 / (1000 Mbps) = 0.70 ns. Here
the rise time criterion is just satisfied, so that the maximum link length is 220 m for Gigabit Ethernet operating at
850 nm on 62.5-m fibers.
The maximum length for Gigabit Ethernet running on 50-m fibers is 550 m due to the higher bandwidth on these
fibers.

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Line Coding
signal.
signal.

In designing a communication link, an important consideration is the format of the transmitted digital
This is significant because the receiver must be able to extract precise timing information from the incoming
The three main purposes 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

Line coding (channel coding) is the process of introducing extra bits into the raw data stream at the
transmitter on a regular basis and extracting them again at the receiver.

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