An OptifSIM Simulator for Optical Fiber Network

This paper present an interactive Optical Fiber Simulator (OptifSim) for Optical Fiber Networking using MATLAB for user who have little or no programming knowledge of MATLAB. Attenuation of Optical Fibers limit the performance of optical communication systems and management of infrastructure which include fault localization. Thus, signal loss in the fiber optics and security vulner-ability of the data poses a great concern. The OptiFSim also have the option to generate plots for easy interpretation and analysis. This paper will describe the use of OptiFSim for the analysis of some optical communication components to calculate most of the optical fiber related parameters such as attenuation loss, Rayleigh scattering, propagation constant and maximum attenuation allowed before a signal amplifier can be applied. This knowledge enable the network engineer in the design and know exactly where to place and amplifier for compensating the attenuation in the long distance network.