Welcome to the course!

Fiber-optic Communication, SK2811 (SK3883)

General information

The lectures will be held at KTH Albano, floor 5, conference room Neon (room 5338) in newly built house 3. Due to the expected few students  no regular exercise classes are planned. However, after each lecture there will be time to ask questions about the exercises.

1. Enter Albanova building from main entrance on fifth floor
2. Continue on the same floor to elevator C53 (far left en of the building)
3. Take the elevator to floor 1
4. Exit the Albanova building and cross the street to main entrance of House 3, Hannes Alfvéns väg 12
5. Take the elevator to fifth floor
6. Knock on the glass door to the right of elevator exit or phone Richard Schatz at +46 73 6672485 and I will open
7. The conference room Neon is located straight ahead and then to the right (see map)

We strongly encourage you to attend all lectures.

The laboration will be held in Electrum, Kista

Take underground towards Akalla (blue line) and get off at Kista C. Take southern exit that enters Kista galleria and take left after the stairs. Walk straight ahead along Kistagången until Electrum building, Kistagången 16 (see map)

or

Take bus 178 from Danderyds sjukhus towards Jakobsberg and get off at station Jan Stenbecks torg and walk along Kistagången until Electrum building, Kistagången 16 (see map). Inside the building go straight ahead on the same level as the entrance until after elevator until you see a glass door on your right leading to room Ka-306. Please read the lab instructions carefully and solve the problems you can before the lab.

Please mail rschatz@kth.se if you are unable to attend the lectures or laborations or if you are no longer interested to participate in this course.

Preliminary Schedule

Goal

The course content is knowledge of fibre-optical components and systems with application to communications.

Requirements

One written examination (TEN1; 6 credits) and one laboratory course (LAB1; 1.5 credits)

What is fibre-optic communication, and what is the course?

The high ways of the IT society are the optical fibres. An optical fibre can transport several terabit per second over thousands of kilometers. The limitations today are in the electronics. Fibre-optic communication is an established technique but is simultaneously in rapid technical development towards higher bit-rates and more complex networks. The course will give you the knowledge in order to understand both the fundamentals and the rapid development, that you as professional engineer can use the fibre optics efficiently. The course treats important devices as optical fibres, laser diodes, optical detectors, and receivers from physical and transmission system point of view. You will also learn how to optimise optical communication links and calculate the bit error rate.

Aim

The course content is knowledge of fibre-optical components and systems with applications to communications. The transmission systems relevant parameters of devices are derived from physical descriptions, and form the basis for designing fibre-optic links. After a completed course, the participants should be able to:
- understand, describe, analyse, and compare the most important devices: optical fibres, light sources,   and optical detectors
- design of digital fibre-optic links

Syllabus

Dielectric waveguides: Attenuation, wavelength dispersion, modes, fields. Light sources and optical amplifiers: Semiconductor laser, light-emitting diode, rate equations, output power, modulation response, chirp, noise, optical amplifiers. Detectors: PIN-diode, avalanche diode, responsivity, bandwidth, noise. Transmission systems: Optical links, direct detection systems, soliton systems, coherent systems, dispersion limitations, attenuation limitations, additive noise, signal dependent noise, bit error rate, optical networks.

Prerequisites

It is anticipated that the students are acquainted with:

• Waveguides: Wave equation and the concept of modes.
• Solid-state electronics: p-n-junction
• Circuit theory: Impulse response, convolution, transfer function of linear systems.
• Signal theory: Auto correlation function, power spectral density

Required reading

Fibre-Optic Communication Systems, third edition or fourth edition, Wiley, by Agrawal. It can be downloaded as a pdf via your KTH account: http://kth-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/
Printed versions (new or used) can be found at e.g.www.amazon.de, www.addall.com, www.cdon.com, www.bokus.com (Links to an external site.). Supplementary course material: problems with solutions, manuals for the laboratory, and exams are available as pdf-files on course homepage.

Reading instructions

The contents of the course book are comprehensive. Most chapters start at a rather elementary level but end at a rather advanced level. Some parts in the book are near the research front and are more suitable for advanced courses. The focus of the course is defined by the lectures and the problems in the supplementary course material. Some parts of the book are not included or only briefly discussed.

4th edition:
Following parts are not included in this course: 8.5, 9.2.2-9.3.5, Chapter 11

Following parts can be read selectively: 9.5

Write down in the book the numerical values of common natural constants such as c, k, h, e. Use SI-units.

Teaching method

The course is given in a traditional way, i.e. with lectures followed by corresponding exercises. If the number of students are less than 8, only lectures will be given. There are also two laboratory works.  The language is English.

Staff

Course responsible: Richard Schatz, senior researcher, 08-7904069, rschatz@kth.se

Lecturers, exercises, laborations and exam: Richard Schatz

Official examiner: Urban Westergren