Design of Low Loss Optical Link and Comprehensive Study of Optical Link Loss Budget

Photonic multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) technologies such as generalized MPLS, optical burst switching and optical packet switching have received considerable attention as promising solutions to cope with the growth of the internet and internet related services. Among them, OPS has the potential to maximize fiber capacity utilization due to time domain statistical multiplexing with packet -level data granularity. Furthermore OPS may be superior in terms flexibility of traffic engineering and network scalability. However OPS imposes a severe technical burden on forwarding functions such as label processing and content resolution because high speed, asynchronous, arbitrary-length ,burst optical packets, not stream data must be handled on a packet by packet basis. In this paper we discuss the various types of losses associated with an optical network and optical link loss budget by fiber optic simulation. The performance of an MZI switch has also been analyzed by incorporating it in the link, which is one of the most promising candidates for realization of highly scalable realistic switching fabrics. A comprehensive study has been made to optimize performance of the link by selecting the most suitable components at each point in the network. The bit error rate has also been measured and the Q factor has been determined for optimum performance. In this paper we also discuss the extraction of thermal noise parameter for a specific receiver sensitivity, receiver noise and receiver sensitivity and sensitivity degradation. All the simulations have been done using the optisystem module of optiwave.