What is Fiber Dispersion
Apr 19, 2023| Optical fiber dispersion refers to a physical phenomenon (signal distortion) caused by different frequency components and different mode components because the signals transmitted by the optical fiber are carried by different frequency components and different mode components at different transmission speeds.
Since the refractive index of the fiber material is a nonlinear function of the wavelength, the transmission speed of light changes with the wavelength, and the resulting dispersion is called material dispersion. Material dispersion is mainly caused by the spectral width of the light source. Since the light source used in optical fiber communication is not monochromatic light and has a certain spectral width, the propagation speed of light waves of different wavelengths is different, resulting in time delay difference and pulse broadening.
Dispersion causes the output optical signal pulse to be broadened to generate inter-symbol interference and increase the bit error rate, which limits the communication capacity and transmission distance.