Module 6: Propagation of EM waves in optical fibers (6 h)

 Introduction to optical fiber communication

 Light propagation through fibers
 Acceptance angle, numerical aperture
 V-parameter, Types of fibers
 Attenuation, dispersion, intermodal and intramodal
 Application of fiber in medicine, endoscopy
 Introduction to optical fiber communication

God is great engineer – any image seen by human eyes connected to the brain by optical nerves

• Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behavior and properties of light, including
its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it.
• An optical Fiber is a thin, flexible, transparent Fiber that acts as a waveguide, or "light pipe",
to transmit light between the two ends of the Fiber.
• Optical fibers are widely used in Fiber-optic communications, which permits transmission
over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data rates) than other forms of
communication.
• Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel along them with less loss and
are also immune to electromagnetic interference.
History

1870 – British Physicist – John Tyndall showed to Royal society that light could be guided along a
curved glass stream.

1880 - Alexander Graham Bell : demonstrated - role of optical fiber communication by transmitting
speech in the form of light waves.

1960 – next era – development of an optical fiber started with the use of optical fiber as a wave guide
for light. Heavy transmission losses restricted its further development.

1970 – An industry named “Corning glass works” fabricated low loss fibres.

Solid state laser diode was used to avoid losses.

 Evolution of fiber Optic system

Generation Technique Bit Rate Repeater spacing Operating

wavelength
First (1975) single-mode fiber 45 Mb/s 10 km 0.8 μm.
GaAs
Second single-mode fiber 100 Mb/s to 1.7 Gb/s 50 km 1.3 μm;
In GaAsP
Third single longitudinal mode 2.5 to 10 Gb/s 100 km 1.55 μm;
In GaAs

Fourth wavelength-division multiplexing 10 Tb/s to 14 Tb/s > 10,000 km 1.45 to 1.62 μm

(WDM)
Fifth Raman amplification technique 40 - 160 Gb/s 24000 km - 35000 1.53 to 1.57 μm
and Optical solitiors km
 Advantages of Optic Fiber Communication Link (OFCL)

• Due to easily and large scale availability of SiO2 makes the optical fiber cheaper.
• In terms of the physical size, mass, diameter of the fiber and mechanical strength and compactable flexibility makes the
utility of the fibers as a smart medium of signal carrier. Digital communication is possible.
• Optical fibers are eco- friendly and non hazardous being dielectric connection between the transmitter and receiver. No
fire, no explosion, no spark.
• No cross talk is possible due to non interference of electromagnetic of radio frequency signals.
• Very secure communication since it is not possible to tap the signal without senders knowledge.
• Wide band width ie., the information carrying capacity of the optical communication system is very large. Theoretically
band width of the order 50Tb/s is possible.
• Attenuation is very less (of the order 0.15 dB/km).
• Since photons carry the information, the data transmission speed is very high.
• Optical communication is not affected by weather conditions. Resistant to external stimuli like temperature, pressure,
humidity, corrosiveness etc.
• Works on the principle of total internal reflection (TIR).
 Total internal reflection – principle of optical fiber

• The refracted ray bends away from the normal as the light travels from
denser to the rarer medium.

• As the angle of incidence increases, the angle of refraction also

increases.

• At a particular angle ic no light penetrates into the second medium.

The angle at which the ‘r’ equals 90o is called critical incident angle.

• Increasing further the angle of incidence ‘i’ so that i > ic , all light is
reflected back to the same medium. This phenomenon is said to be
Total Internal Reflection (TIR).
Propagation of light wave inside a fiber optic cable • Principle of TIR enables to keep the light inside the fiber
 •It has in general three co-axial regions.
•The inner most region is the light guided region, known as
core.
•It is surrounded by another co-axial region known as cladding.
•The outer most layer is known as sheath or jacket or buffer.
Construction of optical fiber

•Core : R.I be n1. Made from silica or doped silica.

•Cladding : R.I be n2. n2 slightly less than n1. Made from silica
or polymer with one or more layer. Cladding reduces the
scattering loss at the core surfaces.
•Buffer : It encapsulates the fiber for mechanical strength and
flexibility. Protection of the fiber. Made of elastic plastic material.
Cross-sectional view of the fiber optic cable

Core Cladding
1. Doped silica Silica
2. Silica Polymer
Block diagram of an optical fiber communication link.
Numerical Aperture (NA) : describes the ability of an optical fiber to gather
light from a source followed by preserving/saving/guiding light inside the fibre
enabling TIR.

Acceptance angle (a) : The maximum angle within which light will be
accepted by an element / fibre to under go TIR. Generally it is half conical
angle.

The half-angle of the cone (a) within which incident light is totally internally
reflected by the fiber core. It is equal to sin-1(NA).
 Conditions for Light Propagation in Optical Fibers

The refractive index of the core (n1 ) is greater than that of the cladding (n2), the light is totally
internally reflected provided the angle of incidence (θc) is greater than the critical incident angle
(θc). This is the angle the beam makes with the line perpendicular to the optical boundary between
the core and cladding.
The core-cladding boundary at the critical incident angle (θc) or above it in order to provide the TIR
According to Snell's law,
sin 𝑖 𝑛
sin 𝑟
= 𝑛2 (θc = i)
1

𝑛 𝑛2
𝑛1 sin 𝜃𝑐 = 𝑛2 sin 90° ; sin 𝜃𝑐 = 𝑛2 i.e., 𝜃𝑐 = sin-1
1 𝑛1

Another angle αc is the critical propagation angle (light is confined with in the core; αc lesser is allowed;
grater reflection and refraction possible)
From the figure, θc = 90o - αc => sin θc = sin (90o - αc ) = cos αc
 𝑛
We have, sin 𝜃𝑐 = 𝑛2
1

𝑛
cos 𝛼𝑐 = 𝑛2 , from the relation we can write, sin 𝛼𝑐 = 1 − 𝑐𝑜𝑠 2 𝛼𝑐
1

𝑛2 2 𝑛2 2
sin 𝛼𝑐 = 1 − => 𝛼𝑐 = sin-1 1−
𝑛1 𝑛1

From the figure, it is clear that the angle, θa is a

spatial angle. Light will be saved inside the fiber if it
comes from a light source bounded by the cone, 2
θa. The angle, θa, is called conical half angle.
Generally the angle, θa is referred to as acceptance
angle.
Despite having discussed many angles that form the conditions for achieving TIR, in practice, fiber-
optic communications technology does not operate with any angles but, integrates all these factors
into one characteristic called numerical aperture (NA);It is expressed as,

Light carrying capacity of optical fiber or the ability of the fiber to gather light from a source.

NA = sin θa

NA = n₁2 − n₂2

Numerical aperture in terms of relative index NA = n₁ 2Δ

𝑛1 −𝑛2
Where ∆=
𝑛
 Fiber modes
MODES:

• The Propagation of light within the fiber can be described as set of guided EM waves

• The light beam travelling at a particular angle in a fiber can be referred as a mode
 Classification of optical fibers

Optical fibers are based on

Materials No. of Modes Refractive index profile

Single Multi Step Graded

Glass Plastic
mode mode index index
fiber fiber
fiber fiber fiber fiber
Comparison of single mode and multimode fibers.

Core diameter : 5-
10μm

Cladding diameter: ~
125μm

Core diameter :50-

350μm

Cladding
diameter :125μm -
500μm
Comparison of step index and graded index fibers.
 V Parameter

• It is also called as the V number or fiber parameter or normalized

frequency.

• It is an important parameter that signifies the number of modes at a

given wavelength in the fiber.

If V ≤ 2.405, then the fibre is single mode fibre (SMF)

If V > 2.405, then the fibre is multimode fibre (MMF)

a is the radius of the fiber, a good approximation to the number of

modes N in a step-index multimode fiber is given by, N ≈ V2/2
Impediments (Losses)
• Dispersion (spreading of light pulse)

• Attenuation (absorption or bending loss)

• Nonlinear effects (intensity dependence of refractive index of the medium or due

to inelastic-scattering phenomenon)
 DISPERSION :
Dispersion is the spreading of a light pulse as it travels down the length of an optical fiber.

Dispersion ultimately limits the information-carrying capacity of a fiber.

There are two major types of dispersions,

• Inter modal (Pulse widening )

• Intra modal

This dispersion arises within a mode of the pulse, also called as chromatic dispersion.
 • Intermodal Dispersion

Measuring intermodal dispersion

•The modes take different routes but travels with same

velocity and hence arrive at different time at the
receiver end of the FO Cable.

•This ultimately causes the pulse widening and is called

intermodal dispersion or simply modal dispersion.

•For digital transmission : logic 1 – light pulse; logic 0 – no light pulse.

•Light pulse enters a fibre, each pulse breaks down to a set of small pulses carried by a individual mode.

•At the fibre end, individual pulses recombine and overlaps resulting in a long pulse.
 A zero-order mode travelling along the fiber axis needs time (t0), to reach the receiver end

𝐿
𝑡0 = 𝑣 ; where L is the link length v = c/n1; is the velocity of the light with in the core having refractive index n1
c is the velocity of light in vacuum

𝐿
The higher order mode propagating nearly or at the critical angle need the time; 𝑡𝑐 = to reach the
(𝑣 cos 𝛼𝑐 )
receiver end
Therefore the pulse widening due to intermodal
dispersion is,

Where Δ is the relative refractive index. Equation represents the pulse widening stemming from intermodal
dispersion in the case of a step index fiber. Hence the intermodal dispersion ultimately restricts the bit rate of
the optical communication system.
 STEP-INDEX FIBER
(MULTIMODE) LARGE
INTERMODAL
DISPERSION

GRADED-INDEX FIBER REDUCED

(MULTIMODE) INTERMODAL
DISPERSION

NO
STEP-INDEX FIBER INTERMODAL
(SINGLE MODE) DISPERSION

INPUT PULSE MODES OUTPUT PULSE

The light pulse travels as different modes in a fiber. Although
each mode travels at same velocity, since each of them travel
different distances, each mode arrives at different times after
travelling through the fiber
𝐿𝑛1
∆
𝐶
∆ should be small to minimise intermodal dispersion ( NA !!!)

 Can be reduced by using Graded index fibers

 Completely eliminated using single mode fibers ( small core fibers)
• INTRAMODAL DISPERSION (single mode)

MATERIAL DISPERSION

Each wavelength in the input light travels at different velocity hence arrive at
different times at the output end of the fiber

WAVEGUIDE DISPERSION

Although most of the mode travels in the core (n1), a small tail of the mode propagates
in the cladding (n2). Therefore every mode involves some amount of dispersion due to
the waveguide structure of the optical fiber
The application and uses of optical fibre
• Medical Industry

• Communication

• Defense

• Industries

• Broadcasting

• Lighting and Decorations

• Mechanical Inspections
 Endoscopy

Endo - inside ; scope – device to look

Coherent bundles are combination of different fibres where their terminations occupy the same
relative positions in both of the bound ends.
The coherent bundles are capable of transmitting images and are the flexible image carriers.