Fiber optic attenuation is caused by absorption and scattering. Absorption is from molecules in the glass absorbing light and converting it to heat. Scattering occurs when light collides with glass atoms at angles outside the fiber's numerical aperture. Scattering is proportional to the inverse fourth power of wavelength, so longer wavelengths experience less attenuation. Together, absorption and scattering determine a fiber's attenuation curve. Single-mode fiber at 1550nm has the lowest attenuation of around 0.25 dB/km.

1. FIBER OPTIC BASICS
Part 3 - Attenuation

2. Fiber
Attenuation
The attenuation of the optical
fiber is a result of the
combination of two factors,
absorption and scattering.
The absorption is caused by
the absorption of the light
and conversion to heat by
molecules in the glass.
Primary absorbers are
residual OH+ and dopants
used to modify the refractive
index of the glass. This
absorption occurs at discrete
wavelengths, determined by
the elements absorbing the
light. The OH+ absorption is
predominant, and occurs
most strongly around 1000
nm, 1400 nm and above1600
nm.

3. Fiber
Attenuation
The largest cause of
attenuation is scattering.
Scattering occurs when
light collides with
individual atoms in the
glass and is anisotrophic.
Light that is scattered at
angles outside the
numerical aperture of the
fiber will be absorbed into
the cladding or
transmitted back toward
the source Scattering is
also a function of
wavelength, proportional
to the inverse fourth
power of the wavelength
of the light.

4. Fiber
Attenuation
Thus if you double the
wavelength of the light,
you reduce the scattering
losses by 24
or 16 times.
Therefore , for long
distance transmission, it
is advantageous to use
the longest practical
wavelength for minimal
attenuation and maximum
distance between
repeaters. Together,
absorption and scattering
produce the attenuation
curve for a typical glass
optical fiber shown.

5. Fiber Attenuation – Typical Specs
Fiber Type @
Wavelength
850 nm 1300 nm 1550 nm
Multimode 3 dB/km 1 dB/km NA
Singlemode NA 0.4 dB/km 0.25
dB/km

6. Bandwidth
Fiber's information transmission capacity is limited by
two separate components of dispersion: modal and
chromatic dispersion. First modal dispersion:
Step index multimode fiber has a core composed of
only one type of glass. Light traveling in the fiber
travels in straight lines, reflecting off the core/cladding
interface. Since each mode or angle of light travels a
different path link, a pulse of light is dispersed while
traveling through the fiber, limiting the bandwidth of
step index fiber.

7. Bandwidth
In graded index multimode fiber, the core is composed
of many different layers of glass, chosen with indices of
refraction to produce an index profile approximating a
parabola. Since the light travels faster in lower index of
refraction glass, the light will travel faster as it
approaches the outside of the core. Likewise, the light
traveling closest to the core center will travel the
slowest. A properly constructed index profile will
compensate for the different path lengths of each mode,
increasing the bandwidth capacity of the fiber by as
much as 100 times that of step index fiber.

8. Bandwidth
Singlemode fiber just shrinks the core size to a
dimension about 6 times the wavelength of the fiber,
causing all the light to travel in only one mode. Thus
modal dispersion disappears and the bandwidth of
the fiber increases by at least another factor of 100
over graded index fiber.

9. Bandwidth
The second factor in fiber bandwidth is chromatic
dispersion. Remember a prism spreads out the
spectrum of incident light since the light travels at
different speeds according to its color and is
therefore refracted at different angles. The usual way
of stating this is the index of refraction of the glass is
wavelength dependent. Thus a carefully
manufactured graded index multimode fiber can only
be optimized for a single wavelength, usually near
1300 nm, and light of other colors will suffer from
chromatic dispersion. Even light in the same mode
will be dispersed if it is of different wavelengths.

10. Bandwidth
Chromatic dispersion is a bigger problem with LEDs,
which have broad spectral outputs (their output light
is comprised of many wavelengths of light), unlike
lasers which concentrate most of their light in a
narrow spectral range. Chromatic dispersion occurs
with LEDs because much of the power is away from
the zero dispersion wavelength of the fiber. High
speed systems, based on broad output LEDs, suffer
intense chromatic dispersion, about equal to the
modal dispersion.

11. Bandwidth - Specs
Fiber Type Bandwidth at 850
nm (MHz-km)
Bandwidth at 1300
nm (MHz-km)
62.5/125 (FDDI) 160 500
50/125 500 500
50/125
(laser-rated)
2000 500

12. Bandwidth
For almost fifteen years, one had only two choices if
you were installing fiber. The defacto-standard
multimode fiber had a core/cladding size of 62.5/125
microns and was rated for use with FDDI (Fiber
Distributed Data Interface) or Fast Ethernet, both 100
Mb/s networks that used inexpensive LED sources
as transmitters. Longer distances or higher speeds
called for singlemode fiber with a small 8 micron
core that required expensive laser sources.
Fiber manufacturers had not put any real engineering
effort into multimode fiber in fifteen years because
62.5/125 fiber met the industry’s needs. But with the
advent of Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), calls for longer
distances on multimode fiber sent them back to the
labs. And what they came up with was a brand new
twenty-year old fiber - 50/125!

13. Bandwidth
• GbE uses a 850 nm laser for a source, so the fiber
manufacturers revived a fiber that dated back to the
“prehistoric era” of fiber - 1980 - when long distance
telecom networks used newly-developed 850 nm
lasers with a fiber that had a 50 micron core
optimized for use with lasers.
• Now manufacturers have improved the performance
of this 50/125 fiber even more, to allow use with 10
Gigabit Ethernet and Fiber Channel.