Abstract

A free-space optical (FSO) transmission system is experimentally demonstrated in the long-wave infrared (LWIR, 9.15 μm) using a directly modulated quantum cascade laser (DM-QCL) and a commercial mercury-cadmium-telluride infrared photovoltaic detector. At room temperature, the DM-QCL is current-modulated by discrete multitone signals pre-processed with bit-/power-loading. Up to 5.1 Gbit/s data rate is achieved with bit error rate performance below the 6.25% overhead hard-decision forward error correction limit of 4.5 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-3</sup> , enabled by a frequency domain equalizer. The stability study of the FSO system is also performed at multiple temperature values. This study can provide a valuable reference for future terrestrial and space communications.

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