Optical Link Budgets

This chapter will examine the technical requirements for designing fiber optic data communication systems. We begin with an introduction to basic link budget design techniques, suitable for practitioners such as network designers, followed by a more detailed review of optical link design considerations. Optical link design concepts discussed include transmitter output power, receiver sensitivity, and properties of optical connectors, couplers, and splices. Figures of merit including bit error rate and signal-to-noise ratio are defined. Both worst case and statistical techniques are presented, including test and validation methods for the completed link. Optical power penalties are discussed, including dispersion (modal and chromatic), intersymbol interference, mode partition noise, mode hopping, extinction ratio, relative intensity noise, multipath interference, wavelength-dependent attenuation, bending loss, timing jitter, radiation-induced darkening, modal noise, and stimulated Raman and Brillouin scattering.

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