apps.AppDB

FibreTool is a simple and convenient utility for use in laboratory or field experiments involving fibre-optic communication systems.

The following features are provided:

i) conversion of power values between mW and dBm;

ii) conversion between peak-to-peak voltage and average electrical power into a 50 Ω load for either a sinusoidal or square-wave input, which is useful when checking that RF drive signals do not exceed maximum instrument input powers;

iii) calculation of either optical extinction ratio, optical modulation amplitude or average optical power when two of these values are specified;

iv) calculation of the first-order dispersion parameter of a single-mode fibre, for a specified source wavelength, fibre zero-dispersion wavelength and fibre zero-dispersion slope;

v) calculation of the first-order dispersion of a single-mode fibre link, for a specified fibre first-order dispersion parameter, source spectral width and link length;

vi) conversion between spectral width in the wavelength and frequency domains, for a specified centre wavelength;

vii) conversion between wavelength and frequency;

viii) display of wavelength and frequency for a specified channel number in the ITU 100 GHz grid;

ix) calculation of Q factor and BER for specified mean values and standard deviations of "1" and "0" amplitudes;

x) calculation of BER for a specified Q factor;

xi) calculation of the lowest frequency component in a PRBS for a specified PRBS maximum run length and NRZ bit rate, which is useful when considering the low-frequency cut-off point of components such as DC blocks and AC-coupled amplifiers.

NEW in version 1.3:

xii) conversion between link length and time delay for propagation in standard SMF;

xiii) conversion between RF cable length and time delay for a specified square root of the relative permittivity of the dielectric.

All calculations assume wavelengths in vacuo.