Which term is a transmission parameter of fiber?

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Understanding how far and how clean a light signal travels in fiber starts with recognizing that some terms describe how the signal fades as it moves. Attenuation is the reduction in optical power as light propagates through fiber, typically expressed in decibels per kilometer. This makes it a fundamental transmission parameter because it directly quantifies how much of the original signal arrives at the far end of the link. The other terms describe different issues: return loss measures reflections at joins or imperfections, telling you about impedance matching and how much power is reflected back rather than lost during travel; bandwidth refers to the data rate the link can support, not a property of the fiber’s propagation loss; dispersion describes spreading of the optical pulse due to different wavelengths traveling at different speeds, which affects timing and signal integrity rather than the basic loss along the fiber. So attenuation best fits the description of a transmission parameter that characterizes signal transmission through the fiber.