1|Page

Before going into Multiplexing of fiber optic communication,lets have an overview of the optical
fiber communication.

What is Fiber Optic Communication?

Unlike copper wire based transmission where the transmission entirely depends on electrical
signals passing through the cable, the fiber optics transmission involves transmission of signals
in the form of light from one point to the other. Furthermore, a fiber optic communication
network consists of transmitting and receiving circuitry, a light source and detector devices like
the ones shown in the figure.[1]

When the input data, in the form of electrical signals, is given to the transmitter circuitry, it
converts them into light signal with the help of a light source. This source is of LED whose
amplitude, frequency and phases must remain stable and free from fluctuation in order to have
efficient transmission. The light beam from the source is carried by a fiber optic cable to the
destination circuitry wherein the information is transmitted back to the electrical signal by a
receiver circuit.[1]

Three Basic Elements for Fiber Optic Communictaion:

Compact light source

Low loss optical fiber

Photo detector [1]

Multiplexing in optical fiber communication:

Multiplexing (or muxing) is a way of sending multiple signals or streams of information over a
communications link at the same time in the form of a single, complex signal.

The receiver recovers the separate signals by a process called demultiplexing (or demuxing).
2|Page

Multiplexing in optical fiber communication is a way of sending multiple light signals or streams
of information over an optical fiber communications link at the same time in the form of a
single.[2]

[2]

There are three multiplexing techniques:

1- Wavelength Division Multiplexing.

Wavelength Division Multiplexing:

WDM is one of the multiplexing techniques that increases bandwidth by multiplexing a variety
of optical carrier signals onto a single optical fiber by using different wavelengths. Each signal at
WDM wavelengths is independent of any protocol and any speed. The WDM technology allows
bidirectional communications simultaneously over a single optical fiber. The foundation of
WDM simplifies the network to a single virtual optical fiber network instead of using multiple
forms of signals with different fibers and services. In this way WDM increases the bandwidth
and lowers the networking cost by reducing the needed fibers. There are two different
wavelength patterns of WDM systems, coarse (CWDM) and dense (DWDM). CWDM and
DWDM are based on the same concept of using multiple light wavelengths on a single fiber, but
differ in the spacing of the wavelengths, number of channels, and the ability to amplify the
multiplexed signals in the optical space. In a WDM system, different optical signals are
combined (multiplexed) together at one end of the optical fiber and separated (demultiplexed)
into different channels at the the other end.
3|Page

The optical carrier WDM is often regarded as an analogous technique of frequency division
multiplexing, which typically applies to a radio carrier. However, there is no essential difference
between them since they communicate the same information.[3]

Time Division Multiplexing:

The basic principle of this technology is to multiplex a number of low bit rateoptical channels in
time domain. The overall OTDM system can be viewed as three big block.

1. Transmitter block
2. Line system
3. Receiver block

Transmitter block:

The transmitter block is consist of Laser sources, modulators, channel alignment systems, and
multiplexer.

Line system:

The line system contains optical amplifiers and transmission fibers.

Receiver block

The receiver block is made of synchronization/timing extraction circuit and channel

Channel allocation by time division multiplexing is dependent on the fundamental electrical data
rate and the optical pulse width. With fixed electrical clock, one must shorten the optical pulse
width in order to multiplex more channels within the clock period. In addition, the shortened
pulse width can help reduce the crosstalk between channels because of more room left in bit slot.
However, short optical pulses are subjected to heavy dispersion penalty as traveling distance
increases. The use of transform-limited pulse and dispersion slope compensation technique can
reduce the dispersion effect on OTDM. Transform-limited pulse has the property that minimizes
4|Page

the optical spectral width for a given pulse width. This ensures the pulse broadening due to
dispersion is minimized. Adding negative slope dispersion fiber can actually reduced the pulse
broadening effect over long distance. This is dependent on the choice of dispersion slope factor
and length of the dispersion compensated fiber, which in turn depends on the fiber fabrication
technology. Polarization mode dispersion is also a main concern as traveling distance increases
over 100km. Accurate control on the channel alignment is also critical as transmission speed
increases because more channels are multiplexed in a fix clock period. Any misalignment can
affect the performance of the OTDM system because of crosstalk and dispersion.Electro-optic
switching technique or all-optical switching technique can achieve demultiplexing at receiver
end. The electro-optic technique is great for transmission speed at less than 40Gb/s. It is more
difficult to achieve for speed over 40Gb/s due to restraint on electrical drive power. All-optical
switching is based on third order nonlinear effect of the optical fiber. It is highly suitable for
ultra-fast speed transmission because the non-linear response is in fs range. It is also allowing
add/drop of an individual channel or a number of channels, which is great feature for network
operation. Although, the all-optical switch is very bulky and expensive to made. Nevertheless,
successful demultiplexing can only be accomplished with accurate timing extraction. The timing
jitter from the extraction circuit can directly affect the BER performance of the OTDM system.

[4]

[5]

Optical Frequency Division Multiplexing:

Various multicarrier modulation techniques have been developed to meet the need for high speed
communication. In this, CDMA and OFDM are mainly important. OFDM is a frequency division
multiplexing (FDM) technique utilized as a digital multi carrier modulation method. A large
number of closely spaced orthogonal sub carriers are used to send the data. The data is divided in
to several parallel streams of channel. Each sub-carrier is modulated with a modulating technique
such as QPSK at a low symbol rate, maintaining total data rate similar to single carrier
modulation in the same bandwidth
5|Page

OFDM System:

The development of OFDM system can be divided into three stages, these are Frequency
division multiplexing, multicarrier communication and orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing.

Frequency Division Multiplexing:

Frequency division multiplexing is a form of multiplexing technique in which non-overlapping

Multicarrier Communication:

It is ineffective to transfer a high rate data stream through a channel, so the signal is split to give
a number of signals over that frequency range. Each of these are modulated individually and
transmitted. At the receiver, a demux is used to de-modulate the signals and these are then
recombined to obtain the desired signal.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing:

OFDM is a type of multicarrier modulation which is best suited for transmission over a
dispersive channel. The carriers are independent of one another that is they are orthogonal to
each other. The orthogonality is achieved by placing the carriers exactly at the nulls in the
modulation spectra of each other. The diagram of this OFDM spectrum is shown in figure 1 & 2.
From the figure 2, it can be seen that one subscriber’s peak point corresponds to the other
subscriber’s zero point, therefore when a subscriber is sampled at its peak, there is no
interference from other subscribers as all other subscribers have zero crossings at that point. So
the orthogonality property of OFDM is very important as it leads to the more efficient usage of
spectral resources, which is limited in many communication media[6].

Comparison Of Optical Wavelength,Time & Frequency Division Multiplexing:

Channel division:

WDM divides the channel into two or more wavelength ranges that do not overlap,While TDM
divides and allocates certain time periods to each channel in an alternating manner.

Bandwidth:

For TDM, each signal uses all of the bandwidth and some of the time, While for WDM, each
signal uses a small portion of the bandwidth and all of the time.
6|Page

Flexibility:

TDM provides greater flexibility and efficiency, by dynamically allocating more time periods to
the signals that need more of the bandwidth, while reducing the time periods to those signals that
do not need it.

While WDM lacks this type of flexibility, as it cannot dynamically change the width of the
allocated wavelength.

Latency:

WDM proves much better latency compared to TDM. Latency is the time it takes for the data to
reach its destination. As TDM allocates time periods, only one channel can transmit at a given
time, and some data would often be delayed, though it’s often only in milliseconds. Since
channels in WDM can transmit at any time, their latencies would be much lower compared to
TDM. WDM is often used in applications where latency is of utmost priority, such as those that
require real-time information.

Refrences:

[1]

https://www.elprocus.com/basic-elements-of-fiber-optic-communication-system-and-its-
working/

[2] https://community.fs.com/blog/fiber-optic-transmission-multiplexing-technique.html

[3] https://community.fs.com/blog/fiber-optic-transmission-multiplexing-technique.html

[4] http://soe.northumbria.ac.uk/ocr/downloads/otdm/otdmgv1-02.pdf

[5]
https://www.google.com/search?q=Optical+time+division+multiplexing+IMAGES&source=lnm
s&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjh3r-
j27nhAhWDDuwKHahaCikQ_AUIDigB&biw=1366&bih=657#imgrc=TFLs9R8fegzEtM:

[6] https://www.ijarcce.com/upload/2015/june-15/IJARCCE%2072.pdf
7|Page