Wireless and photonic system engineering, Tutorial 2019-10-25

Some old photonic exam problems:

2008, Aug 18-3. Inside high-end automobiles it is becoming common to use polymer
optical fibers (POFs) to transmit data between various systems within the car. A typical
step-index POF has a core diameter of 1 mm, a core index of 1.492, and is surrounded by
a thin cladding layer with n=1.412. The loss of these fibers is rather high, around 100
dB/km, and the couplig losses (Tx-fiber, fiber-fiber, fiber-Rx) may accumulate up to 20
dB in the worst case. Estimate the bandwidth of data that can be transmitted with this
fiber inside a car if the source is a typical LED (10 mW of output power) and the receiver
a p-i-n-diode. Make reasonable assumptions if needed, and state them clearly. (10p)

2008, Jan 08-2. In an optically preamplified receiver, an amplifier with 30 dB of gain

and maximum 6 dB of noise figure is required. Unfortunately you do not have such an
amplifier. However, you have two EDFA:s; EDFA1 which has a gain of 20 dB and a
noise figure of 10 dB, and EDFA2 which has a gain of 20 dB and a noise figure of 5 dB.
You also have a 10 dB attenuator. Can you use these 3 components to reach the desired
specifications, and if so, how should they be assembled? (10p)

2008, Oct 20-3. Your first assignment as a new employee at “FTTH inc.” is to check the
maximum length of their fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) system, intended to provide
broadband services to houses in suburbs and less densely populated areas outside the
main cities.

The company’s system consists of a downlink (towards the end user) which transmits 1
Gb/s and is based on a single-wavelength, directly modulated laser and a standard single-
mode fiber at the wavelength of 1300 nm. Then the uplink (from the end user) uses the
same fiber, but an LED at 1550nm, directly modulated at a data rate of 50Mb/s. The
detectors are simple p-i-n diodes with responsivity 1 A/W at 1300 nm and 1.2 A/W at
1550 nm. The laser-to-fiber coupling loss is 3 dB, the LED-to-fiber coupling loss is 10
dB, and the coupler losses in transmitters and receivers add another 6 dB of losses for the
links. The fiber attenuation is 0.3 dB/km at 1300 and 0.2 dB/km at 1550. The output
power is 0 dBm for both the laser and the LED. Optical amplifiers are too expensive to be
considered for this kind of link and not used.

a) Why do you think those wavelengths, light sources and the fiber
type were selected for this kind of system? (3p)
b) Make a power budget calculation to estimate the maximum length of
this system, given OOK modulation and a required BER<10-9! Is it the
downlink or the uplink that limits the maximum system length? (7p)
2008, Jan 08-3. Estimate (by making a rise time budget) the dispersion-limited
transmission distance of a 10 Gb/s (on/off keyed) optical Ethernet transmission link based
on standard single-mode fiber. The wavelength is 1550 nm, at which the dispersion is
D=16 ps/(nm km). Assume the transmitter and receiver contributes with rise times of 40
ps each, and make a reasonable assumption for the system rise time. The transmitted
pulses are transform-limited, which means that the source spectrum can be assumed to be
equal to the signal spectral width. (10p)

2008, Aug 18-4. A WDM system oprerates in the C-band (1530-1565 nm). The channels
fill the entire band, and has a separation of 100 GHz. Just after the WDM-multiplexer the
power is boosted by a high-power EDFA which has a gain of 30 dB and a maximum
output power of 20 dBm. What it the maximum transmission distance in a system which
has no more inline amplifiers, a receiver sensitivity of -25dBm and standard SMF?
(10p)
Solutions

080818-3
Inside high-end automobiles it is becoming common to use polymer optical fibers (POFs)
to transmit data between various systems within the car. A typical step-index POF has a
core diameter of 1 mm, a core index of 1.492, and is surrounded by a thin cladding layer
with n=1.412. The loss of these fibers is rather high, around 100 dB/km, and the couplig
losses (Tx-fiber, fiber-fiber, fiber-Rx) may accumulate up to 20 dB in the worst case.
Estimate the bandwidth of data that can be transmitted with this fiber inside a car if the
source is a typical LED (10 mW of output power) and the receiver a p-i-n-diode. Make
reasonable assumptions if needed, and state them clearly.

Solution: Clearly this is a multimode fiber (the radius a >> l), and using a ray-optics
approach, the dispersive broadening st per unit fiber length L is st=Ln1∆/(2c), where ∆ is
the index difference and n1,2 the core/cladding indices. Allowing the dispersive
broadening to be ¼ of the bit interval 1/B, we find the available bit-rate distance product
to be BL=L/ 4st = c/2n1∆. Using the numbers for the POF we find ∆=(n1-n2)/n1=(1.492-
1.412)/1.492=0.0536, and BL=1.9$ Mbit/s km. Assuming a typical wiring distance
(including some margin) in a car of 30 m we find that a capacity of 1.9/0.03=63 Mbit/s is
possible.
We should also consider the attenuation and the thermal noise limit of this system; 30 m
would have a loss of 100x0.03=3 dB pluse connector losses which would add up to 23
dB. If we require a received SNR of 20 dB, thus SNR=(RPrec)2/sT2 =100, where R is the
responsivity (assumed to be 1 A/W), Prec the received optical power and sT2 the thermal
noise variance given by sT2= 4kTB/RL , we find the receiver sensitivity to be Prec= 10 sT
/R=1.44 µW= -28 dBm. With 10 dBm of transmitted power, the received power is 10-
23=-13 dBm, which is safely15 dB away from the sensitivity limit. Thus the system, is
dispersion limted to 63 Mb/s.

080108-2
In an optically preamplified receiver, an amplifier with 30 dB of gain and maximum 6 dB
of noise figure is required. Unfortunately you do not have such an amplifier. However,
you have two EDFA:s; EDFA1 which has a gain of 20 dB and a noise figure of 10 dB,
and EDFA2 which has a gain of 20 dB and a noise figure of 5 dB. You also have a 10 dB
attenuator. Can you use these 3 components to reach the desired specifications, and if so,
how should they be assembled?

Solution: By putting the attenuator last the SNR will not be affected. The cascading
formula for the noise figure of two amplifiers is Feff=Fn1+Fn2/G1., so clearly, the first one
contributes mostly to the noise and you should thus put EDFA2 first, followed by EDFA1
and the attenuator.The total noise figure is then Feff=100.5+10/100=3.26 ≈5.1 dB.
081020-2
Your first assignment as a new employee at “FTTH inc.” is to check the maximum length
of their fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) system, intended to provide broadband services to
houses in suburbs and less densely populated areas outside the main cities. The
company’s system consists of a downlink (towards the end user) which transmits 1 Gb/s
and is based on a single-wavelength, directly modulated laser and a standard single-
mode fiber at the wavelength of 1300 nm. Then the uplink (from the end user) uses the
same fiber, but an LED at 1550nm, directly modulated at a data rate of 50Mb/s. The
detectors are simple p-i-n diodes with responsivity 1 A/W at 1300 nm and 1.2 A/W at
1550 nm. The laser-to-fiber coupling loss is 3 dB, the LED-to-fiber coupling loss is 10
dB, and the coupler losses in transmitters and receivers add another 6 dB of losses for
the links. The fiber attenuation is 0.3 dB/km at 1300 and 0.2 dB/km at 1550. The output
power is 0 dBm for both the laser and the LED. Optical amplifiers are too expensive to
be considered for this kind of link and not used.

a) Why do you think these wavelengths and this fiber was selected? (3p)
b) Make a power budget calculation to estimate the maximum length of this
system, given OOK modulation and a required BER<10-9! Is it the downlink or
the uplink that limits the maximum length? (7p)

a) The fiber must be low loss and low dispersion to enable 1 Gb/s over many kilometers
without amplification or dispersion compensation. Hence SMF. The downlink requires
much more bandwidth, and then 1300 where the dispersion is minimum is chosen. The
uplink is less bandwidth demanding, and an LED can then be used as a low-cost source.
The LED-fiber coupling losses is an issue that can be circumvented by using the low-loss
regime at 1550 nm.

b) To get a BER<10-9 we need a Q>6. The Q for this link equals

Q=I1/2sT=R2Prec/2√(4kT∆f/RL), where Prec is the average received power, and assuming
thermal noise dominates, which will be verified later when we know the received power.
This is Prec>6√(4kT∆f/RL)/R, which for ∆f=1 GHz, RL=50Ω, R=1, T=300K, gives
Prec>3.4•10-6 [W]=-24.6 dBm.
For the uplink we get similarly (but instead using ∆f=50 MHz and R=1.2)
Prec>0.64•10-6 [W]=-31.9 dBm.
The power budget becomes for the downlink 0-3-6-0.3L>-24.6, which gives L<52 km.
For the uplink we find 0-10-6-0.2L>-31.9, which gives L<79.5 km.

Thus the downlink limits the maximum length to 52 km.

Comparison of shot and thermal noise at Prec=-24.6 dBm:

sT2=3.3•10-13 [A2], ss2=1.1•10-15 [A2], thus shot noise is safely ignored.
080108-3
Estimate (by making a rise time budget) the dispersion-limited transmission distance of a
10 Gb/s (on/off keyed) optical Ethernet transmission link based on standard single-mode
fiber. the wavelength is 1550 nm, at which the dispersion is D=16 ps/(nm km). Assume
the transmitter and receiver contributes with rise times of 40 ps each, and make a
reasonable assumption for the system rise time. The transmitted pulses are transform-
limited, which means that the source spectrum can be assumed to be equal to the signal
spectral width.

Solution: Assuming a system rise time of 0.7T=70 ps, the allowed fiber rise time is
√(70^2-2*40^2)=41.2 ps. Using a spectral width of 10 GHz, which corresponds to 0.08
nm, we get L=41.2/(16*0.08)=32 km.

080818-4
A WDM system oprerates in the C-band (1530-1565 nm). The channels fill the entire
band, and has a separation of 100 GHz. Just after the WDM-multiplexer the power is
boosted by a high-power EDFA which has a gain of 30 dB and a maximum output power
of 20 dBm. What it the maximum transmission distance in a system which has no more
inline amplifiers, a receiver sensitivity of -25dBm and standard SMF?

Solution: The frequency difference of the C-band is c/1530-c/1565= 4.39 THz. Thus
4.39/0.1=44 channels is used. The power per channel after the booster amplifier is
100/44=2.27 mW=3.6 dBm, and the loss budget allows for 3.6-(-25)=28.6 dB, or
(assuming an attenuation of 0.2 dB/km) a fiber length of 28.6/0.2=143 km.