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Fibre design issues

Fibre design issues as said above, in its simplest form a step-index fibre consists of a cylindrical core. Surrounded
by a cladding layer whose index is slightly lower than that of the core. Both core and cladding use silica as the
basic material. The difference in the refractive indexes realized by doping the core or the cladding or both.
Dopants such as GeO2 and P2O5 increase the refractive index of silica and are suitable for the core. On the other
hand, dopants such as B2O3 and fluorine decrease the refractive index of silica. The major design issues for the
optical fibres related to the refractive-index profile. To the amount of dopants, and the core and cladding
dimensions.
Figure 1-2 shows typical index profiles that have used for different types of fibres.
Standard fibres

The top row corresponds to standard fibres which designed for having minimum dispersion near 1 300 nm. With a
cut-off wavelength in the range 1 100-1 200 nm. The simplest design consists of a pure silica cladding and a core
doped with GeO2.
A commonly used variation has a reduced cladding index over a region adjacent to the core by fluorine doping. It
is also possible to have an undoped core using a design shown. The fibre design issues as said above, in its
simplest form a step-index fibre consists of a cylindrical core surrounded. By a cladding layer whose index is
slightly lower than that of the core of these last two types referred to as depressed cladding fibres.
They also called W fibres reflecting the shape of the index profile. The bottom row of shows three index profiles
used for the dispersion-shifted fibres which have the zero- dispersion wavelength in the range 1450-1600 μm.
A step or triangular index profile with a depressed or raised cladding often used for this purpose. The refractive
indexes and the thicknesses of the different layers optimized to design a fibre with the desirable dispersion
characteristics.