Method for Calculating Extinction Ratio of Optical Modules
You can find extinction ratio with this formula: Power (On) divided by Power (Off). Extinction ratio, when used to describe the performance of an optical transmitter used in digital communications, is simply the ratio of the energy (power) used to transmit a logic level '1', to the energy used to transmit a logic level '0'. As design/test margins get tighter, the challenges of making accurate and repeatable extinction ratio measurements become more apparent. The purpose of this application note is to show how the optical extinction ratio is defined and to demonstrate how variations in extinction ratio affect the performance of digital optical.
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