Optical communications

Properties and limitations of metal transmission lines: twisted pair, coaxial cable and metal wave-guide, bandwidth and attenuation of coaxial cable. Reflection and refraction of electromagnetic waves on the boundary of two different dielectrics, implementation of a planar wave-guide, group delay, dispersion equation, and number of modes in a planar dielectric wave-guide. Multi-mode and single-mode optical fibers, raw materials and methods of fabrication, multi-mode, chromatic and polarization-mode dispersion, non-linear effects in optical fibers. Optical-network components: splitters, combiners, filters, diffraction gratings, wavelength multiplexers, light-wave isolators and circulators. Optical-source properties, longitudinal and transversal coherence, source modulation, source types: filament bulbs, gas-discharge bulbs, light-emitting diodes, gas and solid-state lasers and their properties. Light-wave modulators, electro-optical phase modulator, electro-optical amplitude modulator, electro-absorption modulator. Lightwave receivers: thermal, photo-resistors and photo-diodes, quantum efficiency, photo-resistor and photo-voltaic regimes, quantum and thermal noise of an optical receiver, implementations of different receivers, clock recovery, clock jitter. Optical amplifiers, fiber and solid-state amplifiers, Brillouin and Raman effects.

Learning the fundamentals of guided-wave (wired) communications. Reasons to use optical fibers. Learning optical fibers and other components of optical networks: optical transmitters, optical modulators, optical receivers and optical amplifiers.

Lectures to explain the theoretical background and laboratory experiments to practically confirm the theory in the spirit of team work.