Attenuation and bit-rate limitations in LED/single-mode fiber transmission systems

In this analysis, distortion of the spectral distribution of the light due to the wavelength dependence of the loss in the fiber is taken into account. The computations show that the system performance of a given fiber type may be characterized by three parameters, one for attenuation and two for dispersion. The attenuation in the fiber may be modeled by an average attenuation per unit length, whereas the bit rate that limits the sensitivity degradation in the receiver due to intersymbol interference to less than 1 dB may be modeled by a bit-rate distance product and a constant bit rate valid for long lengths of fiber. As a design aid in system planning, diagrams showing the three parameters as functions of the diode center wavelength and the spectral width for typical single-mode fibers have been prepared