Abstract
Chromatic and temperature induced dispersion can both severely affect incoherent high data rate communications in optical fibre. This is certainly also true for incoherent optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) systems with multi-wavelength picosecond code carriers. Here, even a relatively small deviation from a fully dispersion compensated transmission link can strongly impact the overall system performance, the number of simultaneous users, and the system cardinality due to the recovered OCDMA auto-correlation being strongly distorted, time-skewed, and having its full width at half maximum (FWHM) value changed. It is therefore imperative to have a simple tunable means for controlling fibre chromatic or temperature induced dispersion with high sub-picosecond accuracy. To help address this issue, we have investigated experimentally and by simulations the use of a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) for its ability to control the chirp of the passing optical signal (OCDMA codes) and to exploit the SOA ability for dispersion management of a fibre link in an incoherent OCDMA system. Our investigation is done using a 19.5 km long fibre transmission link that is exposed to different temperatures (20 °C and 50 °C) using an environmental chamber. By placing the SOA on a transmission site and using it to manipulate the code carrier’s chirp via SOA bias adjustments, we have shown that this approach can successfully control the overall fibre link dispersion, and it can also mitigate the impact on the received OCDMA auto-correlation and its FWHM. The experimental data obtained are in a very good agreement with our simulation results.
Highlights
Optical fibre networks are a vital means of modern communication
To the best of our knowledge, we investigate for the first time the use of an semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) on a transmitter site to mitigate the effects of fibre temperature fluctuations that affect the received optical code division multiple access (OCDMA)
By simulations, that a distorted OCDMA auto-correlation due to the temperature induced fibre dispersion (TD) can be corrected by manipulating the chirp of code carriers when traversing a biased SOA prior to entering the transmission link
Summary
Optical fibre networks are a vital means of modern communication. Today’s applications demand high data rate throughputs and this demand continues to increase. With incoherent data communication approaches, high data rates demand the use of short optical pulses as data carriers. An effective management of these short optical pulses, mainly their temporal broadening due to. Sci. 2018, 8, 715 dispersion effects in optical fibre, is becoming increasingly challenging. It has been observed that the signals are 16 times more sensitive to chromatic dispersion at 40 Gb/s when compared to that at
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