Optical Fiber Communication

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The majority of today’s data, for enterprises and individuals, are transported on fiber optic communication systems. Using the latest advances, fiber optics can provide practically unlimited information capacity and can span any distance. This course starts from the basics of communication and then logically provides a comprehensive knowledge base in this essential communication technology. Discussions include all aspects of fiber optic systems, including the business case, the technical fundamentals, deployment fiber optic systems and the latest advances.

COURSE JUSTIFICATION/RATIONALE

This course is intended to bring to the students the information necessary to understand Optical Communications.  Students are introduced to the basics of different fundamental concepts of optical transmitters and receivers along with transmission losses

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this course, the student should be able to:

§  Discuss the basic terminology and concepts and take the lead in fiber optic discussions

§  Compare and contrast the features, functions, benefits and challenges of fiber optic communications with other wireline and wireless solutions

§  Explain communication requirements with feasible fiber optic systems

§  Specify optical fibers, cables, connectors, splices, and other transmission equipment

§  Illustrate manage all aspects of the fiber optic system life cycle from planning through design, installation, maintenance, upgrading and troubleshooting

§  Examine when and how to test fiber optic systems by use of power meters and OTDRs

LEARNING OUTCOMES

A student completing the course is expected to:

• Align light waves into small optical components with high precision.
• Use modern hardware/software design tools to develop modern communication systems
• Calculate and simulate the attenuation and signal degradation due to intermodal and intramodal distortion.
• Calculate power coupling losses due to connectors, splices, source output pattern and fiber numerical aperture
• Compute and simulate the modes in step index fiber and graded index fiber.
• Design, implement and test WDM communication system using its basic components.
• Simulate a multilevel coherent fiber-optic communication system using computer software
• State the different kind of losses, signal distortion in optical Waveguides and other signaled gradation factors.
• Give the basic elements of optical fiber transmission link, fiber modes configurations and structures.
• Design optimization of SM fibers, RI profile and cut-off wavelength.
• Describe fiber optical receivers such as PIN APD diodes, noise performance in photo detector, receiver operation and configuration.