Ver 20230403 Dr. T.

Huang

ELEC5516 ELECTRICAL AND OPTICAL SENSOR DESIGN

LAB 3 PHOTONICS LAB
LED, PHOTODETECTOR AND OPTICAL FIBER

OBJECTIVES
• Understand optical communication systems using the demonstration kit: DIMOTO TX/RX
board and plastic optical fibre.
• Identify and understand the operation of a light source (i.e. the LED), photodiode, electrical
circuits and optical fibre (i.e. plastic fibre).
• Use optical and electrical measurement equipment to diagnose and investigate the operation
of the system.

LAB EQUIPMENT
1) DIMOTO Lab kit (Fig. 1) including:
a. 1x PCB board with 2 channels transmitting and receiving signals;
b. 1x POF cutting and finishing tool;
c. 2x Coupler
d. 1x Optical filter
e. 2.2mm plastic optic fibre (POF);
2) Portable Optical Power Meter (Fig. 2, shared between two groups)
3) Speakers and audio signal source
4) Digital Oscilloscope (benchtop)
5) Function generator (benchtop)
6) DC power supply (benchtop)

PCB Board Fiber

Optical Filter

Coupler

Cutter
Coupler

Fig. 1: DIMOTO Lab kit

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Fig. 2: Portable Optical power meter.

Notes (reading the following paragraphs before proceeding to Experiments):

1) You need to give your tutors one student card for borrowing the DIMOTO Lab kit and other
accessories. Make sure that after the experiment, you return them in the original
packages/order.
2) The pocket fibre optical power meter is relatively expensive and fragile. Ask a tutor for a
demonstration of the operation before operating it. Care is required to operate optical fibres,
and all the garbage from handling fibres should be dumped into a bin.
3) If you are unfamiliar with the benchtop equipment (i.e. DC power supply, oscilloscope and
function generator), ask a tutor for a demonstration.

LAB SAFETY
Lights could damage your eyes to different extents depending on wavelengths and intensities.
Protections are necessary to work with lasers, such as wearing goggles. In this lab, you do not need
to wear a goggle as we work with LED, but as a good practice, do not look at the light source
directly with your eyes.

EXPERIMENTS

1. HANDLING PLASTIC FIBERS:

Plastic Optical Fibre (POF) is ideal for demonstrating optical communication systems in the student
laboratory environment. POF offers significantly higher safety levels and is significantly easier to
handle and demonstrate with essential lab equipment. The laboratory kit uses 1mm plastic optical
fibre with a 2.2mm cladding. LED and photodiodes use a plugless termination system avoiding the
requirement for fibre termination. A fibre cutter is provided for cutting both simplex and duplex
fibre. The cutter permits:

▪ Fibre to be cut to length (front of the tool);

▪ Duplex pair to be separated (bottom of the tool);

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▪ Cladding to be stripped (single hole).

Practice with the cutter and a piece of plastic fibre, and then prepare two 1 meter-long fibre for the
following tasks as required. Note: optical fibres are fragile. Bending and twisting fibre can cause
extra fibre loss.

Demonstration: demonstrate to the tutor that you can cut the fibre, separate the duplex pair, and
strip the cladding. Prepare two 1 meter-long fibres for the following tasks as required.

2. UNDERSTAND OPTICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM: DIMOTO

TX/RX BOARD AND PLASTIC FIBER
Refer to Appendix A, B and C.

System inputs to the board

Each channel has four input options:
1) Microphone Jack (MIC IN)
2) BNC IN for connection to arbitrary waveform/signal generator in kHz range, 50Ω
terminated. Recommended amplitude is less than 0.5Vpp.
3) Analogue Loopback (RX fed back into output following amplification ANG LB)
4) Digital Loopback (RX fed back into output following amplification and digitisation DIG
LB)
Mode is selected via jumper (J100 and J200) as indicated on the board. Only the first two input
options are required.

System outputs from the board

Each channel has two output options:
1. Headphone or Speaker Jack (the left one is from the red channel, and the right one is from
the green channel).
2. Test points for connection of CRO:
a. Preamplifier output – TP102 and TP202
b. Analog output – TP101 and TP201
c. Digital output – TP100 and TP200
Receiving signals are digitised via comparator circuit – LM393N, U100A and U200A in Figure 2.

LED Tx
Main specifications of LEDs are listed in Table below.
LED peak wavelength spectral bandwidth switching times (10% to 90%
p (nm)  (nm) and 90% to 10%
@IF=10mA)
Red 660 20 tR=0.1s tF=0.1s
Green 530 50 tR=3.5ns tF=16ns

LED driving circuitry consists of AC coupled non-inverting amplifier stage U101A and U201A
(refer to Appendix A and B). AC gain of driving circuit is set via variable resistors RV101, RV201.
LED devices are biased at approximately 30mA. Test points (TP103 and TP203) are available to
measure signals in LED driving circuits.

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Photodiode Rx
Photodiode devices are operated in photovoltaic mode. Photodiodes exhibit responsivity (about 0.2
A/W at 630nm), and the normalised response of the photodiode is shown in Figure 1.

Preamplifier provides a trans-impedance gain of 100KV/A by U101B and U201B. A secondary

amplification (U101C and U201C) stage provides an additional gain set via variable resistor
RV100, RV200.

Demonstration: demonstrate to the tutor that you can identify critical components (LED,
photodiodes, driving circuits, preamplifiers and stage amplifiers) of the optical communication
board.

Fig. 3. Normalised response of the photodiode

3. POWER ON YOUR BOARD

The board requires a +12V DC power supply via banana plug sockets. Before connecting the DC
power supply to the board, verify the DC voltage using a Multimeter.

The onboard voltage of the 9V rail is provided, which is regulated by U300 from the 12V DC
supply. Power on the DIMOTO board by a 12V DC supply with a negative terminal short to the
ground.

Demonstration: to check the correct operation of the board, i.e. power LED D301, red LED
D101, and blue LED D201 are all on.

4. OPERATION OF LED AND ITS DRIVING CIRCUIT UNDER SMALL

SIGNAL MODULATION CONDITION
In this section, you investigate the operation of LED
1) Connect the 1m fibre between the D101 (red terminal-optical out) and the power meter input
port. Adjust the setting (wavelength) of the power meter. Measure the power of the red
channel at the other end of the fibre.

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2) Set up a sine wave of 10 kHz 20 mVpp on a function generator (with output impedance at
50Ω), and connect it to the BNC IN P100 on the board.
3) Measure and record the driving signal for the red LED at the TP103 by a Digital
Oscilloscope
4) Gently adjust the resistance of RV101 by using a tuner (excess force may break the
component), and record the maximum driving signal. What is the maximum voltage gain of
the LED driving circuit?
5) With and without modulated signal, what are the optical powers measured at the end of the
fibre? Will the driving signal affect the output of optical power?
6) Similarly, repeat the above 5 steps for Green LED and its driving circuits.

5. OPERATION OF PHOTODIODE AND ITS KEY PARAMETER

The photodiode converts photonic power to electrical current. In this section, you initially input the
non-modulated light source to the photodiode directly. You have already measured the optical
powers at the ends of 1m fibre for the red and green light in the previous section.
1) Remove the analog input signal from the board (i.e. non-modulated light source).
2) Measure output signals by the Digital Oscilloscope at TP102 and TP202 (PREAMP), which
are the amplified DC voltages of the photodiode.
3) Calculate the ratio of the voltage at the preamplifier and optical power for the red and green
channel in V/W, respectively. Note that there is an intrinsic background voltage appearing at
the test point even without any light input. It would help if you took away that figure for
your calculation. With the trans-impedance gain of the preamplifier of 100kV/A, calculate
the photodiode's responsivities for the red and green light in A/W, respectively.
4) Find out the responsivity of the photodiode (typical 0.2 A/W at 630nm), and work out the
one for red (660nm) and green (530nm) light using the normalised response as shown in
Fig. 3. Compare them with the measured ones and comment on the differences. Note that the
photodiodes for both the red and green channel are the same.

Next, you are going to test the secondary amplification stage (U101C and U201C). The procedures
are the same for both red and blue channels.
5) Put back the analog input signal (10 kHz 20 mV) to make the modulated light source.
6) Loop the fibre from one of two LEDs to its corresponding photodiode.
7) Make sure the AC signals to be 200mVpp at test point TP102 and TP202 (PREAMP),
8) Measure and record the AC signals measured at TP101 and TP201. Adjust the resistance of
(RV100 and RV200), and record the maximum out AC signals, hence the maximum gain of
the second amplifiers.

6. OPERATION OF OPTICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

This section establishes a fibre optic system with your neighbour group to transmit two-way audio
messages.
1) Change the jumper to MIC IN for both JP100 and JP200 on the board.
2) Connect audio signals from available audio sources to the MIC IN – phone jack P101 and
P201 on the board.
3) Connect speakers to P300 – headphone on the board.

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4) Connect fibres from one board's LEDs to the other's photodiodes and vice versa. Make sure
the variable resistors are set in the same positions, i.e. the same amplification.
5) Start the conversation.
6) Listen to outputs from the left (transmitted by red channel) and right speaker (transmitted by
blue channel). Check if the loudness from the two speakers the same? Why?
7) Double/half the length of fibre in your system. Check if the loudness is the same? Why?
8) Twist and bend the fibre. Check if the loudness is the same? Why?

Demonstration: Demonstrate the Optical Communication System to your tutors.

7. Lab Clean-up
Switch off all the equipment, clean up your benches, and return lab kits (ensure that everything is
put back) and accessories to your tutors in the original packages.