Optical Communications

Lecture 1: Introduction

Professor Z Ghassemlooy

Northumbria Communications Laboratory

Faculty of Engineering and
Environment
The University of Northumbria
U.K.
http://soe.unn.ac.uk/ocr
Prof. Z Ghassemlooy 1
Contents
 Reading List
 Lecture 1: Introduction
 Transmission Media
 History
 Communication Technologies
 Applications
 System
 Challenges Ahead
 Lecture 2: Nature of Light & Light Propagation
 Lecture 3: Light Sources and Transmitter
 Lecture 4: Light Detectors and Receivers
 Lecture 5: Optical Devices
 Lecture 6: Optical Networks
 Lecture 7: System Characterisation
 Laboratory
 Tutorials and Solutions: Visit http://soe.unn.ac.uk/ocr

Prof. Z Ghassemlooy 2
Reading List
i J M Senior, Optical Fibre Communications, Prentice-Hall
i G P Agrawal, Fiber-Optic Communication Systems, J
Wiley
i J N Sibley, Optical Communications, Macmillan
i R J Ross, Fiber Optic Communications - Design
Handbook, Prentice Hall.
i T E Stern, et al, Multiwavelength Optical Networks,
Addison Wiley
i R Ramaswami et al, Optical Networks - A practical
perspective, Morgan Kaufmann

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Transmission Media

i Transmission medium, or channel, is the actual physical path

that data follows from the transmitter to the receiver.

i Copper cable is the oldest, cheapest, and the most common

form of transmission medium to date.

i Optical fiber is being used increasingly for high-speed

applications.

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Transmission by Light: why?

i Growing demand for faster and more efficient

communication systems
i Internet traffic is tripling each year
i It enables the provision of Ultra-high bandwidth to
meet the growing demand
i Increased transmission length
i Improved performance
i etc.

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Demand for Bandwidth

Bandwidth
Demand

1990 2000 2010

Typical data bandwidth requirement

• Raw text = 0.0017 Mb
• Word document = 0.023 Mb
• Word document with picture = 0.12 Mb
20,000 x • Radio-quality sound = 0.43 Mb
• Low-grade desktop video = 2.6 Mb
• CD-quality sound = 17 Mb
• Good compressed (MPEG1) video = 38 Mb
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 Historical Developments
• 800 BC Use of fire signal by the Greeks
• 400 BC Fire relay technique to increase transmission distance
• 150 BC Encoded message
• 1876 Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell Invent Telephone

First commercial Telephone

• 1880 Invention of the photophone

by Alexander Graham Bell
• 1897-Rayleigh analyzes waveguide

Prof. Z Ghassemlooy 7
 Historical Developments - contd.
• 1880 Glass rods used for illumination
• 1930 Experiments with silica fibres, by Lamb (Germany)
• 1950-55 The birth of clad optical fibre, Kapany et al (USA)
• 1962 The semiconductor laser, by Natan, Holynal et al (USA)
• 1960 Line of sight optical transmission using laser:
- Beam diameter: 5 m
- Temperature change will effect the laser beam
Therefore, not a viable option

• 1966- A paper by C K Kao and Hockham (UL) was a break

through
- Loss < 20 dB/km 
- Glass fibre rather than crystal (because of high viscosity)
- Strength: 14000 kg /m2.
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Historical Developments - contd.
• 1970 Low attenuation fibre, by Apron and Keck (USA) from
1000
dB/km - to - 20 dB/km
- Dopent added to the silica to in/decrease fibre refractive index.
• Semiconductor Laser I. Hayashi

• Late 1976 Japan, Graded index multi-mode fibre

- Bandwidth: 20 GHz, but only 2 GHz/km
Start of fibre deployment.
• 1976 800 nm Graded multimode fibre @ 2 Gbps/km.
• 1980’s
- 1300 nm Single mode fibre @ 100 Gbps/km
- 1500 nm Single mode fibre @ 1000 Gbps/km
- Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifier
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Historical Developments - contd.
• 1990’s
- Soliton transmission (exp.): 10 Gbps over 106 km with no error
- Optical amplifiers
- Wavelength division multiplexing,
- Optical time division multiplexing (experimental) OTDM
• 2000 and beyond
- Optical Networking
- Dense WDM, @ 40 Gbps/channel, 10 channels
- Hybrid DWDM/OTDM
 ~ 50 THz transmission window
 > 1000 Channels WDM
 > 100 Gbps OTDM
 Polarisation multiplexing
- Intelligent networks
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 Lightwave Evolution
10,000 *
3000

1000
*
300

100
Capacity (Gb/s)

30

10

1 Single Channel (ETDM)

Multi-Channel (WDM)
0.3
Single Channel (OTDM)
0.1 WDM + OTDM
* WDM + Polarization Mux
Soliton WDM Courtesy:
0.03 A. Chraplyvy
80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98 00 02 04
Prof. Z Ghassemlooy Year 11
 System Evolution

10000

1000
Capacity (Gb/s)

Optical networking
100 Research Systems
Wavelength Switching
TOTDM
10
Commercial Systems

1 SONET rings and

Fiberization DWDM linear systems
Digitization
0.1
1985 1990 1995 2000 2004
Year
cisco
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 Existing Systems - 1.2 Tbps WDM
DWDM
• Typical bit rate 40 Gbps / channel
• ~ 8 THz (or 60 nm) Amplifier bandwidth
• 32 channels (commercial) with 0.4 nm (50 GHz) spacing
• 2400 km, no regeneration (Alcatel)
Total bandwidth = (Number of channels) x (bit-rate/channel)
OTDM

• Typical bit rate 6.3 Gbps / channel

• ~ 400 Amplifier bandwidth
• 16 channels with 1 ps pulse width

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Commercial Systems

WDM Voice
Bit rate/ Bit rate/ Regen
System Year chan - channels
channel Fibre spans
nels per fibre
FT3 1980 1 45 Mb/s 45 Mb/s 672 7 km
1.7
FTG -1.7 1987 1 1.7 Gb/s 24,192 50 km
Gb/s
2.5
FT -2000 1992 1 2.5 Gb/s 32,256 50 km
Gb/s
2.5
NGLN 1995 8 20 Gb/s 258,000 360 km
Gb/s
TM 2.5
WaveStar 80 200 Gb/s 2,580,000 640 km
1999 Gb/s
400G 40 400 Gb/s 5,160,000 640 km
10 Gb/s
TM
WaveStar
2001 160 10 Gb/s 1.6 Tb/s 20,640,000 640 km
1.6T
128 10 Gb/s 1.28 Tb/s 16,512,000 4000 km
LambdaXtreme 2003
64 40 Gb/s 2.56 Tb/s 33,0 24,000 1000 km

H. Kogelnik, ECOC 2004

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Communications Technologies
Year Service Bandwidth distance product
1900 Open wire telegraph 500 Hz-km
1940 Coaxial cable 60 kHz-km
1950 Microwave 400 kHz-km
1976 Optical fibre 700 MHz-km
1993 Erbium doped fibre amplifier 1 GHz-km
1998 EDFA + DWDM > 20 GHz-km
2001- EDFA + DWDM > 80 GHz-km
2001- OTDM > 100 GHz-km

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Optical Technology - Advantages
• High data rate, low transmission loss and low bit error rates
• High immunity from electromagnetic interference
• Bi-directional signal transmission
• High temperature capability, and high reliability
• Avoidance of ground loop
• Electrical isolation
• Signal security
• Small size, light weight, and stronger

62 mm

21mm
648 optical fibres
448 copper pairs
363 kg/km
5500 kg/km

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Applications
Electronics and Computers
 Broad Optoelectronic
 Medical Application
 Instrumentation
 Optical Communication Systems
 High Speed Long Haul Networks 

r
fo
(Challenges are transmission type)

e . ay
t i m st
g to
 Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) ?

on re
 Access Network (AN)?

a l s he
si
Challenges are:

ic
t
- Protocol

Op
- Multi-service capability
- Cost
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Undersea Cables

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 System Block Diagram

Transmitter Optical
splice
Drive Optical
Source
circuit source Connector
Optical
coupler
Optical Optical-to- Optical
Tx electronics Rx
Regenerator

Fibre

Optical Optical Sink

amplifier Receiver
detector

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Source

Source
Modulation Multiplexing Modulation
coding
• Frequency
• Analogue
• Time
• Digital

External Internal

• Pulse shaping
• Channel coding
• Encryption
• etc.

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Receiver

Pre-detection Sampler
1 -stage
st
st 2 -stage
nd
nd

filtering &
amplifier amplifier
detector

Demultiplexer

• Equalizer Demodulator

Decoder
Decryption

Output signal

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All Optical Network
IP IP

ATM ATM SDH ATM IP Other

SDH SDH Open Optical Interface

All Optical Networks

Challenges ahead:
• Network protection • Network routing • True IP-over-optics
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Challenges Ahead
 Modulation and detection and associated high speed electronics
 Multiplexer and demultiplexer
 Fibre impairments:
. Loss
. Chromatic dispersion
. Polarization mode dispersion
. Optical non-linearity
. etc.
 Optical amplifier
. Low noise
. High power
. Wide bandwidth
. Longer wavelength band S

Prof. Z Ghassemlooy 23
Challenges Ahead - contd.

 Dedicated active and passive components

 Optical switches
 All optical regenerators
 Network protection
 Instrumentation to monitor QoS

Next Lecture: Nature of Light and Light Propagation

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Further Reading

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