EE 230: Optical Fiber Communication Lecture 5

Attenuation in Optical Fibers

From the movie

Warriors of the Net
Attenuation/Loss In Optical Fibers
Mechanisms: Power transmission is governed by the
following differential equation:
Bending loss
dP
P
dz
Absorption
where is the attenuation coefficient
Scattering loss and P is the total power.

Pout (z)=Pinexp - Z

is usually expressed in dB/km

dBm refers to a ratio
10 P
(dB / km ) Log10 out 4.343
with respect to a L Pin

Note that positive means loss

signal of 1 mW
 Bending Loss
Example bending loss
1 turn at 32 mm diameter
causes 0.5 db loss

Index profile can be adjusted to

reduce loss but this degrades
the fibers other characteristics

Rule of thumb on minimum

bending radius:
Radius>100x Cladding
diameter for short times
13mm for 125mm cladding
Radius>150x Cladding
diameter for long times
19mm

This loss is mode dependent

Can be used in attenuators,

mode filters fiber identifier, fiber
tap, fusion splicing

Microbending loss
Property of fiber, under control
of fabricator, now very small,
usually included in the total
attenuation numbers
Fiber Optics Communication Technology-Mynbaev & Scheiner
Bending Loss in Single Mode Fiber

Bending loss for lowest order modes

Mode Field distributions in straight

and bent fibers
Microbending Loss Sensitivity vs
wavelength
Bending Loss

Outside portion of evanescent field has

longer path length, must go faster to keep up
Beyond a critical value of r, this portion of the
field would have to propagate faster than the
speed of light to stay with the rest of the pulse
Instead, it radiates out into the cladding and
is lost
Higher-order modes affected more than
lower-order modes; bent fiber guides fewer
modes
Graded-index Fiber

r
nr n1 1 2
a
For r between 0 and a. If =, the
formula is that for a step-index fiber

Number of modes is

M akn1
2

2
 Mode number reduction caused by
bending

2 2a 3 2 / 3
N bent N straight1
2 R 2n2 kR
Absorption
In the telecom region of the spectrum,
caused primarily by excitation of
chemical bond vibrations
Overtone and combination bands
predominate near 1550 nm
Low-energy tail of electronic
absorptions dominate in visible region
Electronic absorptions by color centers
cause loss for some metal impurities
Electron on a Spring Model

Response as a function of Frequency

Mechanical Oscillator Model

E-Field of a Dipole
Vibrational absorption

When a chemical bond is dipolar (one atom

more electronegative than the other) its
vibration is an oscillating dipole
If signal at telecom wavelength is close
enough in frequency to that of the vibration,
the oscillating electric field goes into
resonance with the vibration and loses
energy to it
Vibrational energies are typically measured in
cm-1 (inverse of wavelength). 1550 nm =
6500 cm-1.
Overtones and combination bands
Harmonic oscillator selection rule says that
vibrational quantum number can change by
only 1
Bonds between light and heavy atoms, or
between atoms with very different
electronegativities, tend to be anharmonic
To the extent that real vibrations are not
harmonic, overtones and combination bands
are allowed (weakly)
Each higher overtone is weaker by about an
order of magnitude than the one before it
Overtone absorptions in silica
Si-O bond fairly polar, but low frequency
01 at 1100 cm-1; would need six
quanta (five overtones) to interfere with
optical fiber wavelengths
OH bonds very anharmonic, and strong
01 at 3600 cm-1; 02 at 7100 cm-1;
creates absorption peak between
windows
Attenuation in plastic fibers

C-H bonds are anharmonic and strong,

about 3000 cm-1
First overtone (02) near 6000 cm-1
Combination bands right in telecom
region
Polymer fiber virtually always more
lossy than glass fiber
Absorptive Loss

Hydrogen impurity leads to OH bonds whose

first overtone absorption causes a loss peak
near 1400 nm
Transition metal impurities lead to broad
absorptions in various places due to d-d
electronic excitations or color center creation
(ionization)
For organic materials, C-H overtone and
combination bands cause absorptive loss
Photothermal deflection spectroscopy

Arc
lamp

Lock-in
amplifier
Chopper

Lens

HeNe Detector
Sample
cuvette
Scattering loss: from index discontinuity

Scatterers are much smaller than the

wavelength: Rayleigh and Raman
scattering
Scatterers are much bigger than the
wavelength: geometric ray optics
Scatterers are about the same size as
the wavelength: Mie scattering
Scatterers are sound waves: Brillouin
scattering
Raman scattering

A small fraction of Rayleigh scattered

light comes off at the difference
frequency between the applied light and
the frequency of a molecular vibration (a
Stokes line)
In addition, some scattered light comes
off at the sum frequency (anti-Stokes)
Mie scattering from dimensional
inhomogeneities

Similar effect to microbending loss

Mie scattering depends roughly on -2;
scattering angle also depends upon
In planar waveguide devices, roughness
on side walls leads to polarization-
dependent loss
Teng immersion technique

Tunable IR laser
Chopper

Lock-in Amplifier

Detector Motor stage

Intrinsic Material Loss for Silica

Rayleigh Scattering ~ (1/l)4

Due to intrinsic index variations in amorphous silica
 Spectral loss profile of a Single Mode
fiber

Spectral loss of single and Multi-mode

silica fiber

Intrinsic and extrinsic loss components for silica fiber

Fundamentals of Photonics - Saleh and Teich