Hybrid multilevel-multiwavelength signaling scheme for optical data transmission

Abstract

We suggest an idea of data encoding scheme based on the switching from the ground state (GS) to excited state (ES) lasing in quantum dot (QD) lasers with increase in injection current. The groups of two bits are assigned to lasing spectra that comprise either one or both GS and/or ES lasing lines depending on injection current. We expect that the proposed encoding scheme can potentially combine some advantages of multilevel signaling and wavelength division multiplexing.