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.

Chapter Contents:

• 3.1 Introduction
• 3.2 Attenuation
• 3.2.1 Material Absorption
• 3.2.2 Scattering Losses
• 3.2.3 Bending Losses
• 3.3 Dispersion (Arrival Time Distortion)
• 3.2.1 Delay, Bandwidth, and Risetime
• 3.2.2 Modal Dispersion
• 3.2.3 Chromatic Dispersion
• 3.4 Polarization
• 3.5 Non-Silica Fibers

Inspec keywords: optical fibre dispersion; optical fibre polarisation; optical receivers; silicon compounds

Other keywords: nonsilica fiber; single mode fiber; receiver; bit rate 2.5 Gbit/s; Si; digital signaling; wavelength dependent dispersion; silica fiber attenuation; multimode fiber; polarization; optical fiber system

Subjects: Fibre optics; Optical communication equipment