Optical Fiber Performance
Attenuation and dispersion, have been a concern since the beginning of optical fiber use. Polarization performance has become a concern as digital signaling speeds on fibers have progressed beyond 2.5 Gb/s. In designing optical fiber systems, end-to-end performance is generally governed by one or the other of the first two degradations, but generally not both at the same time. Polarization degradations become an added source of distortion for high-speed systems. In this chapter, silica fiber attenuation is discussed first in Section 3.2. The two main types of silica fiber, multimode and single-mode, do not differ greatly in attenuation. Section 3.3 discusses the wavelength dependent dispersion of silica fibers. This results in a time spread at the receiver. Multimode and single-mode fibers differ markedly in dispersion performance. This difference determines their two distinct areas of application: local networking, and long haul. Section 3.4 discusses the polarization performance of silica fibers. Finally, Section 3.5 presents information on the performance of non-silica fibers.
Optical Fiber Performance, Page 1 of 2
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