In
telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...
s, spectral width is the
wavelength
In physics, the wavelength is the spatial period of a periodic wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats.
It is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase on the wave, such as two adjacent crests, tro ...
interval over which the magnitude of all
spectral component
In telecommunications, spectral component is any of the waves that range outside the interval of frequencies assigned to a signal. Any waveform can be disassembled into its spectral components by Fourier analysis or Fourier transformation. The leng ...
s is equal to or greater than a specified fraction of the magnitude of the component having the maximum value.
In optical
communications
Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...
applications, the usual method of specifying spectral width is the
full width at half maximum
In a distribution, full width at half maximum (FWHM) is the difference between the two values of the independent variable at which the dependent variable is equal to half of its maximum value. In other words, it is the width of a spectrum curve mea ...
. This is the same convention used in
bandwidth
Bandwidth commonly refers to:
* Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range
* Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...
, defined as the frequency range where power drops by less than half (at most −3 dB).
The FWHM method may be difficult to apply when the spectrum has a complex shape. Another method of specifying spectral width is a special case of
root-mean-square deviation
The root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) or root-mean-square error (RMSE) is a frequently used measure of the differences between values (sample or population values) predicted by a model or an estimator and the values observed. The RMSD represents ...
where the independent variable is wavelength, λ, and ''f'' (λ) is a suitable radiometric quantity.
The ''relative spectral width'', Δλ/λ, is frequently used where Δλ is obtained according to note 1, and λ is the center wavelength.
See also
*
Spectral linewidth
A spectral line is a dark or bright line in an otherwise uniform and continuous spectrum, resulting from emission or absorption of light in a narrow frequency range, compared with the nearby frequencies. Spectral lines are often used to iden ...
in
optics
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviole ...
References
*
Telecommunication theory
Optical communications
Optics
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