Calculating Power Margin for Fiber-Optic Cable for the SRX5400 Services
Gateway
After calculating a link's power budget, you can calculate the power margin (P
M
), which represents the
amount of power available after subtracting attenuation or link loss (LL) from the power budget (P
B
). A
worst-case estimate of P
M
assumes maximum LL:
P
M
= P
B
– LL
A P
M
greater than zero indicates that the power budget is sufficient to operate the receiver.
Factors that can cause link loss include higher-order mode losses, modal and chromatic dispersion,
connectors, splices, and fiber attenuation. Table 44 on page 163 lists an estimated amount of loss for the
factors used in the following sample calculations. For information about the actual amount of signal loss
caused by equipment and other factors, see your vendor documentation.
Table 44: Estimated Values for Factors That Cause Link Loss
Estimated Link-Loss ValueLink-Loss Factor
Single-mode—None
Multimode—0.5 dB
Higher-order mode losses
Single-mode—None
Multimode—None, if product of bandwidth and distance is less
than 500 MHz–km
Modal and chromatic dispersion
0.5 dBConnector
0.5 dBSplice
Single-mode—0.5 dB/km
Multimode—1 dB/km
Fiber attenuation
The following example uses the estimated values in Table 44 on page 163 to calculate link loss (LL) for a
2 km-long multimode link with a power budget (P
B
) of 13 dB:
•
Fiber attenuation for 2 km @ 1.0 dB/km= 2 dB
•
Loss for five connectors @ 0.5 dB per connector = 5(0.5 dB) = 2.5 dB
•
Loss for two splices @ 0.5 dB per splice =2(0.5 dB) = 1 dB
163