UNIT 2

Attenuation – Absorption,
Attenuation units
 Attenuation
• Signal attenuation (also known as fiber loss or signal loss) as is one of the most
important properties of an optical fiber because it largely determines the maximum
unamplified or repeaterless separation between a transmitter and a receiver.
• Since amplifiers and repeaters are expensive to fabricate, install, and maintain, the
degree of attenuation in a fiber has a large influence on system cost.
• Of equal importance is signal distortion.
• The distortion mechanisms in a fiber cause optical signal pulses to broaden as they travel
along a fiber.
• If these pulses travel sufficiently far, they will eventually overlap with neighboring
pulses, thereby creating errors in the receiver output.

• The signal distortion mechanisms thus limit the information-carrying capacity of a fiber .
• Attenuation of a light signal as it propagates along a fiber is an
important con sideration in the design of an optical communication
system; the degree of attenuation plays a major role in determining the
maximum transmission distance between a transmitter and a receiver
or an in-line amplifier.
• The basic attenuation mechanisms in a fiber are absorption, scattering,
and radiative losses of the optical energy.
• Absorption is related to the fiber material, whereas scattering is associated
both with the fiber material and with structural imperfections in the optical
waveguide
• Attenuation owing to radiative effects originates from perturbations (both
microscopic and macroscopic) of the fiber geometry.
Attenuation Units
• As light travels along a fiber, its power decreases exponentially with distance.
• If P(0) is the optical power in a fiber at the origin (at z = 0), then the power
P(z) at a distance z farther down the fiber is
• For simplicity in calculating optical signal attenuation in a fiber, the common
procedure is to express the attenuation coefficient in units of decibels per
kilometer, denoted by dB/km. Designating this parameter byα . This parameter
is generally referred to as the fi ber loss or the fi ber attenuation. It depends on
several variables
 Absorption
Absorption is caused by three different
mechanisms:
1.Absorption by atomic defects in the glass
composition.
2.Extrinsic absorption by impurity atoms in
the glass material.
3.Intrinsic absorption by the basic constituent
atoms of the fiber material
• Atomic defects are imperfections in the atomic structure of the fiber material.
Examples of these defects include missing molecules, high-density clusters of
atom groups, or oxygen defects in the glass structure.
• Usually, absorption losses arising from these defects are negligible compared
with intrinsic and impurity absorption effects.
• However, they can be significant if the fiber is exposed to ionizing radiation,
as might occur in a nuclear reactor environment, in medical radiation
therapies, in space missions that pass through the earth’s Van Allen belts, or in
accelerator instrumentation.
• In such applications, high radiation doses may be accumulated over several
years.
• The basic response of a fiber to ionizing radiation is an increase in attenuation
owing to the creation of atomic defects, or attenuation centers, that absorb
optical energy. The higher the radiation level, the larger the attenuation, as
Fig. 3.1a illustrates. However, the attenuation centers will relax or anneal out
with time, as shown in Fig. 3.1b. The degree of the radiation effects depends
on the dopant materials used in the fi ber. Pure silica fi bers or fi bers with a
low Ge doping and no other dopants have the lowest radiation-induced losses.
• The basic response of a fiber to ionizing radiation is an increase in attenuation
owing to the creation of atomic defects, or attenuation centers, that absorb
optical energy.
• The higher the radiation level, the larger the attenuation.
• However, the attenuation centers will relax or anneal out with time.
• The degree of the radiation effects depends on the dopant materials used in the
fiber. Pure silica fibers or fibers with a low Ge doping and no other dopants
have the lowest radiation-induced losses.
 Absorption
• The dominant factor in silica fiber is the presence of minute quantities of
impurities in the fiber material. these impurities include OH - (water) ions that
are dissolved in the glass and transition metal ions such as iron ,copper,
chromium and vanadium.
• The presence of OH ion impurities in a fiber preform results mainly from the
ox hydrogen flame used in hydrolysis reaction.
• The peaks and valleys in the attenuation curves resulted in the designation of
the various transmission window shown in figure.
• By reducing the residual OH content fiber below 1ppb,standard commercially
available single mode fiber have nominal attenuation s of 0.4dB /km at
1310nm and less than 0.25 dB/km at 1550nm.
• Impurity absorption losses occur either because of electron transitions between
the energy levels within these ions or because of charge transitions between
ions.
• The absorption peaks of the various transition metal impurities tend to be
broad, and several peaks may overlap, which further broadens the absorption
in a specific region.
• Modern vapor-phase fiber techniques for producing a fiber preform have
reduced the transition-metal impurity levels by several orders of magnitude.
Such low impurity levels allow the fabrication of low-loss fibers.
• The presence of OH ion impurities in a fi ber preform results mainly from the
oxyhydrogen flame used in the hydrolysis reaction of the SiCl4, GeCl4, and
POCl3 starting materials.
• Water impurity concentrations of less than a few parts per billion (ppb) are
required if the attenuation is to be less than 20 dB/km.
• The high levels of OH ions in early fibers resulted in large absorption peaks at
725, 950, 1240, and 1380 nm.
• Regions of low attention lie between these absorption peaks.
• The peaks and valleys in the attenuation curves resulted in the designation of
the various transmission windows shown in Fig.
• By reducing the residual OH content of fibers to below 1 ppb, standard
commercially available single-mode fibers have nominal attenuations of 0.4
dB/km at 1310 nm (in the O-band) and less than 0.25 dB/km at 1550 nm (in
the C-band).
• Further elimination of water ions diminishes the absorption peak around 1440
nm and thus opens up the E-band for data transmission, as indicated by the
dashed line in Fig.
• Optical fibers that can be used in the E-band are known by names such as low
water-peak or full-spectrum fibers .
Fig. 3-1: Optical fiber attenuation
• Intrinsic absorption is associated with the basic fiber material
• It is defined as the absorption that occurs when the material is in a perfect state
with no density variations, impurities, or material inhomogeneities.
• Intrinsic absorption results from electronic absorption bands in the ultra violet
region and from atomic vibration bands in the near-infrared region. The
electronic absorption bands are associated with the band gaps of the
amorphous glass materials.
• Absorption occurs when a photon inter acts with an electron in the valence
band and excites it to a higher energy level
 Scattering Losses
• Due to microscopic variation in the material density
• Compositional fluctuation
• Structural inhomogeneities
• defects occurring during fiber manufacture
• Glass is composed of a randomly connected network of molecules. Such a
structure naturally contains regions in which the molecular density is either
higher or lower than the average density in the glass
• Glass made up of several oxides SiO2,GeO2,P2O5
• The above effects vary the refractive index variations which occur with in the
glass over distances that are small compared to the wavelengths.
• These index variations cause a Rayleigh-type scattering of the light. Rayleigh
scattering in glass is the same phenomenon that scatters light from the sun in
the atmosphere, thereby giving rise to a blue sky
• The expressions for scattering-induced attenuation are fairly complex owing to
the random molecular nature and the various oxide constituents of glass.
• For single-component glass the scattering loss at a wavelength l (given in mm)
resulting from density fluctuations can be approximated by
• Structural inhomogeneities and defects created during fiber fabrication can
also cause scattering of light out of the fiber.
• These defects may be in the form of trapped gas bubbles, unreacted starting
materials, and crystallized regions in the glass.
• In general, the preform manufacturing methods that have evolved have
minimized these extrinsic effects to the point where scattering that results
from them is negligible compared with the intrinsic Rayleigh scattering.
• Since Rayleigh scattering follows a characteristic dependence, it
decreases dramatically with increasing wavelength,
• The losses of multimode fibers are generally higher than those of single-mode
fibers.
• This is a result of higher dopant concentrations and the accompanying larger
scattering loss due to greater compositional fluctuation in multimode fibers.
• In addition, multimode fibers are subject to higher-order-mode losses owing
to perturbations at the core-cladding interface.
 Rayleigh Scattering
• It occurs because the molecules of silicon dioxide have some freedom when adjacent
to one another. Thus, setup at irregular positions and distances with respect to one
another when the glass is rapidly cooled during the final stage of the fabrication
process. Those structural variations are seen by light as variations in the refractive
index, thus causing the light to reflect – that is, to scatter – in different directions
• Rayleigh scattering is a scattering of light by particles much smaller than
the wavelength of the light, which may be individual atoms or molecules. Rayleigh
scattering is a process in which light is scattered by a small spherical volume of
variant refractive index, such as a particle, bubble, droplet, or even a density
fluctuation.
• As light travels in the core, it interacts with the silica molecules in the core.
Rayleigh scattering is the result of these elastic collisions between the light wave and
the silica molecules in the fiber. Rayleigh scattering accounts for about 96 percent of
attenuation in optical fiber
•
 Rayleigh Scattering
• Causes of Rayleigh Scattering:

• It results from non-ideal physical properties of the manufactured fiber.

• It results from inhomogeneities in the core and cladding.
• Because of these inhomogeneities problems occur like –
• a) Fluctuation in refractive index
• b) density and compositional variations.

Minimizing of Rayleigh Scattering:

• Rayleigh scattering is caused due to compositional variations which can be reduced by

improved fabrication.
Single-mode fiber attenuation
 Fiber Bending Loss
• Radiative losses occur whenever an optical fiber
undergoes a bend of finite radius of curvature.
• Fibers can be subject to two types of curvatures:
(a) macroscopic bends having radii that are large compared
with the fiber diameter, such as those that occur when a
fiber cable turns a corner
(b) random microscopic bends of the fiber axis that can arise
when the fibers are incorporated into cables.
 Macro Bending
• For slight bends, the loss is extremely small and is not observed.
• As the radius of curvature decreases, the loss increases exponentially until at
a certain critical radius of curvature loss becomes observable.
• If the bend radius is made a bit smaller once this threshold point has been
reached, the losses suddenly become extremely large.
• It is known that any bound core mode has an evanescent field tail in the
cladding which decays exponentially as a function of distance from the core.
Since this field tail moves along with the field in the core, part of the energy of
a propagating mode travels in the fiber cladding.
• When a fiber is bent, the field tail on the far side of the centre of curvature
must move faster to keep up with the field in the core, for the lowest order
fiber mode.
• At a certain critical distance xc, from the centre of the fiber;
the field tail would have to move faster than the speed of
light to keep up with the core field.
• Since this is not possible the optical energy in the field tail
beyond xc radiates away.
• The amount of optical radiation from a bent fiber depends
on the field strength at xc and on the radius of curvature R.
• Since higher order modes are bound less tightly to the fiber
core than lower order modes, the higher order modes will
radiate out of the fiber first.
 Micro Bending
• Another form of radiation loss in optical waveguide results from mode
coupling caused by random micro bends of the optical fiber.
• Micro bends are repetitive small scale fluctuations in the radius of curvature of
the fiber axis.
• They are caused either by non uniformities in the manufacturing of the fiber or
by non uniform lateral pressures created during the cabling of the fiber.
• An increase in attenuation results from micro bending because the fiber
curvature causes repetitive coupling of energy between the guided modes and
the leaky or non guided modes in the fiber.
• Micro bending losses can be minimized by placing a compressible jacket over
the fiber.
• When external forces are applied to this configuration, the jacket will be
deformed but the fiber will tend to stay relatively straight.
Microbending losses
 Cabling and Packaging losses
• Non uniformities in the manufacturing of
the fiber by non uniform lateral pressure
during the cabling of fiber
 Core and cladding losses
• The core and cladding have different
indices of refraction and therefore differ in
composition, the core and cladding
generally have different attenuation coeffi
cients, denoted α1 and α2 , respectively.
• The loss for a mode of order (n, m) for a
step-index waveguide is
• Pcore/P and Pclad/P are the fractional powers.

• For the case of a graded-index fiber the situation is much more

complicated.
• In this case, both the attenuation coefficients and the modal power
tend to be functions of the radial coordinate.
• At a distance r from the core axis the loss is

• where α1 and α2 are the axial and cladding attenuation coefficients

 Connector and Splices loss
• Interconnection of different fiber lengths is a necessary requirement for the
assembly of complex fiber transmission and signal manipulation networks.
Whether via demountable, physical coupling (via connectorization) or by
irreversible splicing techniques (e.g. fusion splicing) alignment of the fiber
cores is critical to minimize losses associated with the connection.
• In a general sense, successful connections will minimize lateral offset of the
core centers, angular misalignment, tilt, and longitudinal displacement (i.e. the
formation of a gap).
• It is also possible that the two fibers to be joined have different absolute core
dimensions and varied core-clad diameter ratios as well as different core and
cladding glass compositions.