OPTICAL FIBER -

NONLINEARITY
 Nonlinear Impairments
We will study the remaining nonlinear phenomenon in optical
fibers
 Nonlinear Impairments Reasons
1. Use of single mode fiber (SMF) with small cross section of
light carrying area has led to increased power intensity inside
the fiber

2. Use of in-line optical amplifiers has resulted in a substantial

increase in the absolute value of the power carried by a fiber

3. The deployment of multi-wavelength systems together with

optical amplifier

4. The deployment of high-bit-rate (>10 Gbits/s per channel)

systems
 Fiber Nonlinearity

Like any other di-electric medium, the response of the optical

fiber becomes nonlinear upon increasing the intensity of light
traveling through it

In reality, all materials behave nonlinearly at high intensities

and their refractive index increases with intensity

To include nonlinear refraction, we modify the core and

cladding indices of a silica fiber as:
 Fiber Nonlinearity

Where 2 is the nonlinear-index coefficient,

P is the optical power, and

Aeff is the effective mode area

The numerical value of 2 is about 2.61020 m2/W for silica

fibers and varies somewhat with dopants used inside the core

Because of this relatively small value, the nonlinear part of the

refractive index is quite small (< 1012 at a power level of 1 mW)
 Fiber Nonlinearity Effective Area

Since the power is not uniformly distributed within the cross-

section of the fiber, it is convenient to use an effective cross-
sectional area Aeff, related to the actual area A and the cross-
sectional distribution of the fundamental mode F(r, )
 Fiber Nonlinearity - Self Phase Modulation

With the addition of the nonlinear term, the propagation

constant becomes power dependent:

where = 22 /( ) is an important nonlinear parameter

with values ranging from 1 to 5 W1/km depending on the
values of Aeff and the wavelength

Recall that the optical phase increases linearly with the

propagation distance z due to the propagation constant
 Fiber Nonlinearity - Self Phase Modulation

But the term produces a nonlinear phase shift given by:

Where P(z) = Pin exp(z) accounts for fiber losses

Leff is the effective interaction length of fiber given as:

For optical communication systems Leff can be approximated by

1/ as L 1 in practice
 Fiber Nonlinearity Effective Length
The length Leff is chosen such that the area under the curve in
(a) is equal to the area of the rectangle in (b)

A simple model that assumes the power is constant over a

certain effective length has proved to be quite sufficient
 Fiber Nonlinearity - Self Phase Modulation
The nonlinear phase change derived earlier is self-induced,
therefore, the nonlinear phenomenon responsible for it is called
self-phase modulation (SPM)

It should be clear that SPM leads to frequency chirping of

optical pulses

A pulse is said to be chirped if its carrier frequency changes

with time

The frequency change is related to the phase derivative and is

given by:
 Fiber Nonlinearity - Self Phase Modulation
Figure below shows a chirped optical pulse

In contrast with the linear chirp, SPM induced frequency chirp

is proportional to the derivative dPin/dt and depends on the
pulse shape
SPM Induced Spectral Broadening
 Fiber Nonlinearity Self Phase Modulation

In general, spectral broadening of the pulse induced by SPM

increases the signal bandwidth considerably and limits the
performance of lightwave systems

If fiber losses are compensated periodically using optical

amplifiers, should be multiplied by the number of amplifiers
NA because the SPM-induced phase accumulates over multiple
amplifiers

To reduce the impact of SPM in lightwave systems, it is

necessary that 1
 Fiber Nonlinearity Self Phase Modulation

If we use < 0.1 as the maximum tolerable value and

replace Leff by 1/ for long fibers, this condition can be written
as a limit on the input peak power as:

For example, if =2 W1/km, NA = 10, and = 0.2 dB/km, the

input peak power is limited to below ? mW

Clearly, SPM can be a major limiting factor for long-haul

lightwave systems
 Fiber Nonlinearity Cross Phase Modulation

The intensity dependence of the refractive index can also lead

to another nonlinear phenomenon known as cross-phase
modulation (XPM)

It occurs when two or more optical channels are transmitted

simultaneously inside an optical fiber using the WDM technique

In such systems, the nonlinear phase shift for a specific

channel depends not only on the power of that channel but also
on the power of other channels
 Fiber Nonlinearity Cross Phase Modulation

The phase shift for the jth channel becomes:

Here the sum extends over the number of channels

The factor of 2 has its origin in the form of the nonlinear

susceptibility and indicates that XPM is twice as effective as
SPM for the same amount of power
 Fiber Nonlinearity Cross Phase Modulation

The total phase shift depends on the powers in all channels

and would vary from bit to bit depending on the bit pattern of
the neighboring channels

It is difficult to estimate the impact of XPM on the performance

of multichannel lightwave systems

In practice, pulses in different channels travel at different

speeds

The XPM-induced phase shift can occur only when two pulses
overlap in time
 Fiber Nonlinearity Cross Phase Modulation

For widely separated channels they overlap for such a short

time that XPM effects are virtually negligible

On the other hand, pulses in neighboring channels will overlap

long enough for XPM effects to accumulate

Since the nonlinear parameter depends inversely on the

effective core area, the impact of fiber nonlinearities can be
reduced considerably by enlarging Aeff
 Four Wave Mixing (FWM)
Origin of FWM process lies in the nonlinear response of bound
electrons of a material to an applied optical field

Polarization induced in the medium contains not only linear

terms but also the nonlinear terms

The magnitude of these terms is governed by the nonlinear

susceptibilities of different orders

FWM process originates from third order nonlinear

susceptibility ( (3) )
 Four Wave Mixing
Three optical fields with carrier frequencies 1, 2 and 3, co-
propagate inside the fiber simultaneously

( (3) ) generates a fourth field with frequency 4, which is

related to other frequencies by a relation:

In quantum-mechanical context, FWM occurs when photons

from one or more waves are annihilated

New photons are created at different frequencies such that net

energy and momentum are conserved during the interaction
 Four Wave Mixing
2
Third order nonlinearity, as 0 for Silica
PNL 0 3 EEE
Energy Conservation

4 1 2 3
Momentum (p) Conservationphase matching

p= and =

4 1 2 3
 Four Wave Mixing
Four-wave mixing (FWM) is analogous to intermodulation
distortion in electrical systems
 Four Wave Mixing
The generated sidebands travel along with original waves and
will grow at the expense of signal-strength depletion

In general for N-wavelengths launched into fiber, the number of

generated mixed products M is:

Generally, in conventional SMFs, frequencies with separations

less than 20 GHz will mix efficiently

But for Dispersion Shifted Fibers (DSFs), FWM efficiencies are

greater than 20% for separation up to 50 GHz
 Four Wave Mixing
FWM efficiency with respect to channel spacing
 Nonlinear Scattering
Arises due to the interaction of light waves with phonons
(molecular vibrations) in the silica medium

In scattering effects, energy gets transferred from one light

wave to another wave at a longer wavelength (or lower energy)

The lost energy is absorbed by the molecular vibrations, or

phonons, in the medium

For Raman scattering, optical phonons are involved as

opposed to acoustic phonons which are for Brillouin scattering

Optical phonons have higher vibrations compared to acoustic

 Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS)
Raman effect corresponds to the absorption and subsequent
emission of a photon via an intermediate quantum state of a
material

The intermediate state is also called a virtual state

This second wave is called the Stokes wave

The first wave can be thought of as being a "pump" wave that

causes amplification of the Stokes wave

As the pump propagates in the fiber, it loses power and the

Stokes wave gains power
Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS)
 Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS)
In the case of SRS, the pump wave is a high-power wave
(shorter wavelength), and the Stokes wave (longer wavelength)
is the signal wave that gets amplified at the expense of the
pump wave
 Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS)
In general, scattering effects are characterized by a gain
coefficient g, measured in meters per watt, and spectral width
over which the gain is present

The gain coefficient is a measure of the strength of the

nonlinear effect

SRS is a broadband effect where the peak gain coefficient gR is

approximately 6 x 10-14 m/W at 1550 nm

Channels up to 15 THz (125 nm) apart will be coupled with

SRS
 Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS)
Figure shows its gain coefficient as a function of wavelength
spacing
 Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS)
In the case of SBS, the phonons involved in the scattering
interaction are acoustic phonons (lower vibrational energy)

The interaction occurs over a very narrow line width of

= 20 MHz at 1550 nm

Also the Stokes and pump waves propagate in opposite

directions

Thus SBS does not cause any interaction between different

wavelengths, as long as the wavelength spacing is much
greater than 20 MHz, which is typically the case
 Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS)
SBS produces gain in the direction opposite to the direction of
propagation of the signal, in other words, back toward the
source

Thus it depletes the transmitted signal as well as generates a

potentially strong signal back toward the transmitter, which
must be shielded by an isolator

The SBS gain coefficient gB is approximately 4 x 10-11 m/W,

independent of the wavelength
Scattering in Optical Fibers
END