Design curves for optical waveguide digital communication systems

This report contains a series of curves intended to assist the communicator in specifying an optical waveguide digital communication system. The important parameters considered are pulse rate, distance between repeaters and cost. The parameters selected to present specific data are realistic, albeit arbitrary. Both the single mode and multimode fibers are considered; the latter category includes both the step-index and graded-index fibers. Discussion and curves are given to show the transition from dispersion-limited to detector-noise-limited operation. A measure of cost is defined to assist the communicator in specifying values of pulse rate if cost is, in fact, a design parameter.