Statistics of Electrical Dispersion Compensator Penalties of 10-Gb/s Multimode Fiber Links With Offset Connectors

Abstract—In this letter, we investigate the penalty after a 10-Gb/s Ethernet signal is detected and processed. We study the statistics of ideal electrical dispersion-compensation (EDC) performance, measured by the penalty of an ideal decision feedback equalizer (PIE-D), of 300-m multimode fiber links to determine the theoret-ically best possible EDC performance. We calculate the channel responses using two methods: the individual-mode method and the average-mode method. We find a strong dependence of the PIE-D value on the channel model that is used, especially when there is a connector with a large offset in the link. In system design, one should choose a suitable channel model, taking into account the length of the fiber, the magnitude of offset, and the percentage of coverage. Index Terms—Decision feedback equalizers, electrical disper-sion compensator, mode delays, multimode transmission line, optical transmission. I.