SYSTEM DEGRADATION AND POWER PANELTY

The SNR calculation and or the BER calculation assumes that the optical signal consists
of ideal bit streams. That is, it assumes that the bit-1 consists of optical pulse of constant
energy, and there is no energy in bit-0.
In practice however, the bits are distorted due to various reasons and the optical signal is
degraded in addition to the system noise.
To compensate for the system degradation, the signal power has to be increased to
achieve the same SNR or BER performance as that of an ideal system. This increase in
power is called the Power Penalty.
There are two types of signal degradation which can contribute to the power penalty.
1. Degradation during propagation in the optical fiber
2. Degradation due to peripheral electronic and optic components in the system
like the lasers, photo-detectors, couplers etc.

Degradation during Propagation

Modal Noise
The modal noise is associate with the multimode fiber. Various propagating modes inside
a multimode fiber interfere to produce a speckle pattern on the photo detector.
Since the speckle is a spatial redistribution of the energy, and the photo-detector detects
the total energy falling on the detector, as such the modal noise degrade the system
performance.
However, in practice, the photo-detector does not have a uniform response over its
surface. Also the speckle pattern varies as function of time due to temperature and
pressure variations giving a fluctuating photo current. This is the modal nose.
The formation of speckle due to coherent interference of the various modes. Now, since
various modes travel with different speeds, the coherent addition of different modes is
possible only if the differential delay between different modes is much smaller compared
to the coherence time.
The coherence time of light is of the order of 1/ f , where f is the bandwidth of the
source. The speckles would vanish if the modal delay is much larger than coherence time
reducing the modal noise.

For a source like LED, the spectral width is about 30-50 nm, giving spectral width of 3-5
THz. The coherence time of LED would be 0.2-0.3 psec.
Since the typical inter-modal dispersion inside a multimode fiber is few nsec/Km, even
for small networks, where usually the multi-mode fiber is used, the modal noise is very
small.
Modal noise becomes a problem when laser diodes are used as optical sources.

Dispersion
As seen earlier, the optical pulse broadens due to dispersion. On a single mode optical
fiber, the pulse broadening is due to chromatic dispersion.
The pulse broadening affects the system performance in two ways:
1. Part of the bit energy spreads in the neighboring bits causing inter-symbolinterference (ISI).
2. The reduction in the pulse energy because there is energy spread due to
dispersion.
Due to reduction in the pulse energy inside a bit, causes reduction in SNR and
consequently reduction in BER. To get the same BER back, the signal power has to be
increases, giving dispersion induced power penalty.
The dispersion induced power penalty depends upon many factors like, the pulse shape,
spectral profile of laser, fiber dispersion etc. The analysis however, generally carried out
assuming that the pulse broadening is Gaussian.
The dispersion induced power penalty then is related to the reduction in the peak of the
Gaussian due to dispersion.
Let a Gaussian pulse of width i be launched inside a fiber. The pulse is given as

p(t ) A exp(t 2 / 2 i2 ) / i 2
Due to dispersion the pulse will broaden to have a width of

o i2 ( DL ) 2

where D is the dispersion of the fiber, and is the spectral width of the source. L is the
length of the fiber.
The output pulse is

p (t ) A exp(t 2 / 2 o2 ) / o 2
The reduction in the peak amplitude of the pulse is

R i /o

1
1 ( DL / i ) 2

Now the ISI is minimized if 4 B o 1 , where B is the bit rate. Even for the equality
sign we get,
i R o R / 4 B
Substituting in above equation we get

1
1 (4 BDL / R ) 2

R 1 (4 BDL ) 2
The power penalty due to dispersion is

D 5 log 1 (4 BDL ) 2

Dispersion Power Penalty

BLD
0
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
0.25

D (dB)
0
0.088
0.378
0.97
2.22

The system sensitivity degrades rapidly with the dispersion.

System Degradation due to Imperfect Components

Extinction Ratio
A typical transmitter does not have zero photo-current during bit-0. This happens due to
two reasons.
1. A small optical energy is transmitted during bit-0. This is due to the fact that
the laser is not biased at the zero current but is rather biased at the threshold
current to increase the switching speed of the laser. For bit-0 then, a small
incoherent light is emitted by the laser.
2. There is dark current in a photo-diode.
If I 0 and I1 are the photo-currents for the 0 and 1 bit respectively corresponding to
optical powers P0 and P1 , the extinction ratio for the data is defined as

rex I 0 / I1
The parameter Q (defined earlier) can be written as

1 rex 2 Pav

1 rex 0 1

where the average received power is Pav

P1 P2
2

and is the responsivity of the

receiver.
Inverting the relation we get

Pav (rex )

1 rex T Q
1 rex

We can note that for a given Q, the average power requirement increases with the
extinction ratio. We can then define the power penalty as

Pav (rex )
1 r ex
10 log

Pav (0)
1 r ex

ex 10 log

Following Fig. shows the power penalty as a function of the extinction ratio.

Power penalty vs extinction ratio

ex d

The power penalty may become significant if the semiconductor laser is biased above the
threshold. For lasers biased below threshold, the extinction ratio is typically 0.05 and the
power penalty is less than 0.4 dB.

Relative Intensity Noise (RIN).

As seen earlier, the laser shows the relaxation oscillations. Due to these oscillations the
light output during the pulse does not remain constant. The oscillations decay from the
leading edge of the pulse to the trailing edge of the pulse.
For low data rates, the duration of the relaxation oscillation is much smaller compared to
the bit period. However, as the data rate increases, the intensity fluctuation due to the
relaxation oscillation may extend over the entire bit-1.

Low Data rate

High Data rate

The relative intensity noise can be treated as the shot noise, as this noise also has
multiplicative nature.
The RIN parameter can be defined as

rI

Pin 2
Pin

In presence of RIN 1 is modified to s2 I2 , where I is the standard deviation of

the RIN and is given as

I Pin rI
The parameter Q is

2Pav

s2 I2 T

2Pav

s2 (2Pav rI ) 2 T

Now since s 2 (qPav B )1/ 2 , we get

Pav (rI )

Q T qBQ 2
(1 rI2Q 2 )

The power penalty is then defined as

I 10 log[ Pav (rI ) / Pav (0)] 10 log(1 rI2Q 2 )

A plot power penalty due to RIN is shown in Fig. For BER of 109 , Q = 7, and the
power penalty is negligible if rI 0.05 . The power penalty increases rapidly with rI .

Power penalty vs relative intensity noise

I d

Relative intensity Noise

For rI 0.15 , the power penalty is infinite meaning the receiver will never function
satisfactorily no matter how much transmitter power is increased.

Timing Jitter
In a digital system the signal is generally sampled at the center of the pulse.
Due to inaccuracy of the clock recovery at the receiver, the sampling of the pulse is not
precisely at the center of the pulse but is little shifted in time.
The sampling instant jitters around the mean with some variance.
As such if the pulse has constant amplitude, the timing jitter does not affect the sampler
out put. However, due to dispersion and due to reshaping, the pulses are rectangular. The
sampling jitter then gets converted to the amplitude fluctuation which appears as the
noise on the output as shown in Fig.

t
The sampling jitter t is a random variable and hence the fluctuation in current is also a
random variable.
Due the fluctuations the mean of the peak current is reduced decreasing the SNR.
The SNR can be restored by increasing the pulse amplitude. Hence there is power
penalty for timing jitter.
For raised cosine pulse shaping, the can be analytically calculated.
A plot of power penalty due to timing jitter is shown in the Fig.

Power penalty vs Timing jitter

j d

Timing jitter X Data rate

The timing jitter penalty obviously depends upon the fractional timing error in
comparison to the bit duration. The plot therefore gives the power penalty as function of
product of the rms value of the timing jitter and the data rate (inverse of bit duration).
It can be noted that the power penalty very rapidly increases with the timing jitter. When
the rms value of the timing jitter is about 0.15, the power penalty becomes infinite. For a
Gaussian variable, the peak to peak deviation is about 6 times the standard deviation. A
0.15 fractional jitter means peak to peak variation in sampling time equal to the bit
duration. In this case then, the bits can not be sampled properly, and hence the power
penalty is infinite, meaning irrespective of the power, the system will never be able to get
the data correctly.