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EPSRC Reference: GR/R94510/01
Title: FARADAY FAST TRACK PROPOSAL: A DIFFUSION ANALYSIS APPROACH TO WAVE PROPAGATION ALONG OPTICAL MULTIMODE FIBRES
Principal Investigator: Abrahams, Professor ID
Other Investigators:
Lawrie, Dr JB Monro, Dr T
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Professor J Love
Project Partners:
Photon Design Ltd
Department: Mathematics
Organisation: University of Manchester, The
Scheme: Faraday (PreFEC)
Starts: 01 October 2003 Ends: 31 December 2005 Value (£): 103,199
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Continuum Mechanics Optical Communications
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Communications
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
30 May 2002 Mathematics Prioritisation Panel May 02 Deferred
Summary on Grant Application Form
Fibre optic cables are now ubiquitous in their application to the telecommunications world. Such cables are electromagnetic waveguides, of dielectric structure, that transport optical pulses at wavelengths usually in the near infrared portions of the spectrum. Optical waveguides can be divided into two types: singlemode and multimode fibres. For a fibre with lossless dielectric, the former allow only one wave mode to be guided without loss whereas the latter may permit many hundreds or even thousands of such modes. This research proposal seeks to investigate wave propagation in multimode fibres illuminated by coherent sources such as lasers which can excite just a narrow band of modes. These can be utilised to increase substantially the fibre bandwidth as long as the signal transmitted in each mode can be reconstructed from the output. Ray-tracing methods are not useful in this regard, as accurate information on the wave phase as well as amplitude is required on each and every ray. However, the implementation of a full modal analysis or other complete/rigorous method is also ruled out for multimode fibres because of the computational overhead. Fortunately, if only general properties of the guiding are required, such as total bend loss, scattering losses due to small imperfections and small variations in core radius or material dielectric constant (refractive index), then progress can be made. The crucial assumption in the proposed analysis is that, for multimode fibres with both short and long range imperfections, the density of modes approaches a continuum set so that the nearest neighbour coupling can be approximated by a diffusion-like mechanism governed by a differential equation of diffusion type.
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Organisation Website: http://www.man.ac.uk