The performance of direct-detection transceivers employing electronic dispersion compensation combined with DSP-based receiver linearization techniques is assessed through experiments on a 4 × 112 ...Gb/s wavelength-division multiplexing direct-detection single-sideband 16 quadratic-amplitude modulation Nyquist-subcarrier-modulation system operating at a net optical information spectral density of 2.8 b/s/Hz in transmission over standard single mode fiber links of up to 240 km. The experimental results indicate that systems with receiver-based dispersion compensation can achieve similar performance to those utilizing transmitter-based dispersion compensation, provided it is implemented together with an effective digital receiver linearization technique. The use of receiver-based compensation would simplify the operation of a fiber link since knowledge of the link dispersion is not required at the transmitter. The recently proposed Kramers-Kronig receiver scheme was found to be the best performing among the receiver linearization techniques assessed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experimental demonstration of the Kramers-Kronig scheme.
The use of spectrally shaped amplified spontaneous emission noise (SS-ASE) as a method for emulating interfering channels in optical fibre transmission systems has been studied. It is shown that the ...use of SS-ASE leads to a slightly pessimistic performance relative to the use of conventionally modulated interfering channels in the nonlinear regime. The additional nonlinear interference noise (on the channel under test), due to the Gaussian nature of SS-ASE, has been calculated using a combination of the Gaussian noise (GN) and enhanced GN (EGN) models for the entire C-band (4.5 THz) and experimentally shown to provide a lower bound for transmission performance.
A reconfigurable mode demultiplexer based around a liquid crystal spatial light modulator is demonstrated to optically demultiplex modes that share a propagation constant as separate modal channels ...using a single shared phase mask per polarization for all channels.
In this paper, we describe an optical wireless communications system that uses light from an optical fibre access point to provide transparent and bi-directional optical links to nomadic terminals. ...Full localization and tracking is implemented, and a 50 Gb/s link is demonstrated. The link operates in an indoor environment, with a ±30° field-of-view covering a distance of up to 3 m, and a localization accuracy of 0.05° (2.5 mm pointing accuracy at 3 m) is achieved. This demonstration shows that it is feasible to use an automated system to achieve the required alignment for an ultrahigh data rate fibre-wireless-fibre link.
It is predicted that demand in future optical access networks will reach multigigabit/s per user. However, the limited performance of the direct detection receiver technology currently used in the ...optical network units at the customers' premises restricts data rates per user. Therefore, the concept of coherent-enabled access networks has attracted attention in recent years, as this technology offers high receiver sensitivity, inherent frequency selectivity, and linear field detection enabling the full compensation of linear channel impairments. However, the complexity of conventional (dual-polarization digital) coherent receivers has so far prevented their introduction into access networks. Thus, to exploit the benefits of coherent technology in access networks, low complexity coherent receivers, suitable for implementation in ONUs, are needed. In this paper, the recently proposed low complexity coherent (i.e., polarization-independent Alamouti-coding heterodyne) receiver is, for the first time, compared in terms of its minimum receiver sensitivity with five previously reported receiver designs, including a detailed discussion on their advantages and limitations. It is shown that, of all the configurations considered, the Alamouti-coding based receiver approach allows the lowest number of photons per bit (PPB) transmitted (with a lower bound of 15.5 PPB in an ideal implementation of the system), while requiring the lowest optical receiver hardware complexity (in terms of the optical component count). It also exhibits comparable complexity to the currently deployed direct-detection receivers, which typically require over 1000 PPB. Finally, a comparison of experimentally achieved receiver sensitivities and transmission distances using these receivers is presented. The highest spectral efficiency and longest transmission distance at the highest bit rate (10 Gb/s) was reported using the Alamouti-coding receiver, which is also the only one, to date, to have been demonstrated in a full system bidirectional transmission.
The achievable transmission capacity of conventional optical fibre communication systems is limited by nonlinear distortions due to the Kerr effect and the difficulty in modulating the optical field ...to effectively use the available fibre bandwidth. In order to achieve a high information spectral density (ISD), while simultaneously maintaining transmission reach, multi-channel fibre nonlinearity compensation and spectrally efficient data encoding must be utilised. In this work, we use a single coherent super-receiver to simultaneously receive a DP-16QAM super-channel, consisting of seven spectrally shaped 10GBd sub-carriers spaced at the Nyquist frequency. Effective nonlinearity mitigation is achieved using multi-channel digital back-propagation (MC-DBP) and this technique is combined with an optimised forward error correction implementation to demonstrate a record gain in transmission reach of 85%; increasing the maximum transmission distance from 3190 km to 5890 km, with an ISD of 6.60 b/s/Hz. In addition, this report outlines for the first time, the sensitivity of MC-DBP gain to linear transmission line impairments and defines a trade-off between performance and complexity.
A novel digital two-stage linearization filter is proposed for direct-detection (DD) systems and assessed experimentally for the first time. The performance improvement is quantified by experiments ...with a 7 × 25 Gb/s wavelength division multiplexing DD single sideband 16-QAM Nyquist-shaped subcarrier modulation system with a net optical information spectral density of 2.3 (b/s)/Hz. The results indicate that this technique can effectively compensate the nonlinearity caused by square-law detection, while, at the same time reducing the DSP complexity, avoiding the need to perform the multiple iterations which are required in previously proposed beating interference cancellation methods.
Optical vortex beams that carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), also known as OAM modes, have attracted considerable interest in recent years as they can comprise an additional degree of freedom for ...a variety of advanced classical and quantum optical applications. While canonical methods of OAM mode generation are effective, a method that can simultaneously generate and multiplex OAM modes with low loss and over broad spectral range is still in great demand. Here, via novel design of an optical fiber device referred to as a photonic lantern, where the radial mode index ("m") is neglected, for the first time we demonstrate the simultaneous generation and multiplexing of OAM modes with low loss and over the broadest spectral range to date (550 nm). We further confirm the potential of this approach to preserve the quality of studied OAM modes by fusion splicing the end-facet of the fabricated device to a delivery ring-core fiber (RCF).
We describe the design of a trained and pilot-aided digital coherent receiver, capable of detecting a 1 Tb/s superchannel with a single optical front-end. Algorithms for receiver training are ...described, which calculate the equalizer coefficients, subchannel SNRs, and centroids of the transmitted constellations. Algorithms for pilot-aided operation are then described in detail, providing pilot-aided constant modulus equalization and joint carrier-phase estimation over several coherent subchannels. We demonstrate the detection of a superchannel with net bit rate in excess of 1 Tb/s with a single coherent receiver. An 11 × 10 GBd DP-64QAM Nyquist superchannel is used, with 1.32 Tb/s gross bit rate.
Single-polarization direct-detection transceivers may offer advantages compared to digital coherent technology for some metro, back-haul, access and inter-data center applications since they offer ...low-cost and complexity solutions. However, a direct-detection receiver introduces nonlinearity upon photo detection, since it is a square-law device, which results in signal distortion due to signal-signal beat interference (SSBI). Consequently, it is desirable to develop effective and low-cost SSBI compensation techniques to improve the performance of such transceivers. In this paper, we compare the performance of a number of recently proposed digital signal processing-based SSBI compensation schemes, including the use of single- and two-stage linearization filters, an iterative linearization filter and a SSBI estimation and cancellation technique. Their performance is assessed experimentally using a 7 × 25 Gb/s wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) single-sideband 16-QAM Nyquist-subcarrier modulation system operating at a net information spectral density of 2.3 (b/s)/Hz.