Abstract
Future generations of wireless communication systems are expected to support orders of magnitude faster data transfer with much lower latency than the currently deployed solutions. Development of wireless transceivers of higher bandwidth, low energy consumption, and small footprint becomes challenging with radio frequency (RF) electronic technologies. Photonics‐assisted technologies show many advantages in generating signals of ultrabroad bandwidth at high carrier frequencies in the millimeter‐wave, terahertz, and IR bands. Among these frequency options, the mid‐IR band has recently attracted great interest for future wireless communication due to its intrinsic merits of low propagation loss and high tolerance of atmospheric perturbations. A promising source for mid‐IR free‐space communications is the semiconductor quantum cascade laser (QCL), which can be directly modulated at a high speed and facilitates monolithic integration for compact transceivers. Herein, the research and development of QCL‐based free‐space communications are reviewed and a recent experimental study of multi‐gigabit transmission with a directly modulated mid‐IR QCL and a commercial off‐the‐shelf IR photodetector is reported on. Up to 4 Gb s−1 transmission of two advanced modulation formats, namely, four‐level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM‐4) and discrete multitone (DMT) modulation, is demonstrated.
Highlights
Semiconductor lasers are playing an important role in the inforthe mid-wavelength IR (mid-IR) band, spanning a much broader range in the electromagnetic spectrum, appear as promising candidates to unlock such limitations.[1,2] There have been several experimental demonmation and communication infrastructure worldwide
We made an overview of the status of quantum cascade lasers (QCLs)-based free-space optical communications (FSOC) research and summarized the representative experimental demonstrations of such systems up to now
Our recent experimental investigations with advanced modulation formats are presented in detail, and we show up to 4 Gb sÀ1 back-to-back connection with a directly modulated 4.65 μm QCL at room temperature
Summary
Semiconductor lasers are playing an important role in the inforthe mid-IR band, spanning a much broader range in the electromagnetic spectrum, appear as promising candidates to unlock such limitations.[1,2] There have been several experimental demonmation and communication infrastructure worldwide. Since strations with high data rate transmissions in the THz band, many about three decades ago, the world has witnessed a rapid replace- of them assisted with photonic technologies.[3,4,5] On the other ment of copper-wire communication with fiber optics in both hand, along with the upshifted carrier frequency and broadened core and access network segments, upon the technological readi- bandwidth, these wireless systems are adopting a new paradigm ness of optical transceivers, optical fibers, amplifiers, filters, and where the signals are emitted as guided waves with high-gain. Jacobsen Networks unit RISE Research Institutes of Sweden Kista 16440, Sweden
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