Coherent Wavelength Division Multiplexing Research Articles

High-Capacity Coherent WDM Networks Empowered by Probabilistic Shaping and End-to-End Deep Learning

To optimize the functionality of coherent optical fiber communication (OFC) systems and enhance their capacity related to long-haul transmissions, wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) and probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) techniques have been used. This paper develops an end-to-end (E2E) deep learning (DL)-based PCS algorithm, i.e., autoencoder (AE) for a high-order modulation format WDM system that minimizes nonlinear effects while ensuring high capacity and considers system parameters, in particular those related to the OFC channel. Only the AE of the central channel is trained to meet the specified performance objective, as the system design employs identical AEs in each WDM channel. The simulation results show that the architecture should consist of two hidden layers, with thirty two nodes per hidden layer and a ”32×modulation order” batch size to obtain optimal system performance, when designing AE using a dense layer neural network. The behavior of the AE is examined to determine the optimum launch-power ranges that enhance the system's performance. The developed AE-based PCS-WDM provides a 0.4 shaping gain and outperforms conventional solutions.

Investigation of a coherent dual-polarized 16-QAM 16-channel WDM FSO gamma–gamma fading system under various atmospheric losses

This work presents the dual-polarized quadrature amplitude modulated (QAM) signals transmitted via a sixteen-channel wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and free-space optics (FSO) communication link. Through an FSO link up to 98 km, it achieves a transmission rate of 120 Gbps per channel. The system's performance is evaluated by calculating atmospheric attenuations in clear, hazy, rainy, and fog situations. Optisystem, an optical network design tool, examined the proposed link. Bit error rate, received signal constellation, error vector magnitude, and geometric loss for various FSO channel lengths were calculated. According to the results, the system can successfully transmit a data rate of 1.92 Tbps over the 98 km range of the FSO link under clear weather, 18.5–3.8 km under haze, 6.25–2.3 km in the rain, and 4.55–2.15 km in fog conditions. Comparing results to previous reports showed that the proposed system was found to be better in dynamic atmospheric circumstances.

Frequency-offset-tolerant optical frequency comb-based coherent transmission for intra-datacenter interconnections.

In recent years, in order to increase the capacity and scalability of intra-datacenter (DC) transmission, the optical frequency comb (OFC) source has been considered promising to replace discrete lasers, aiming to reduce the cost of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission within DC. In this paper, an OFC based coherent architecture is proposed. An OFC, in the receiver side, is split by a splitter with a uniform power ratio and separately used as local oscillators (LOs) to detect the demultiplexed signals. The signal spectrum is copied onto every tone of the LO-OFC, and a large frequency offset (FO) tolerance is achieved. In addition, the required ADC sampling rate is the same as a system without FO. Extensive simulations are conducted. In the simulated coherent WDM transmission system, a 3-tone-OFC is used to provide 3 carriers, and an 11-tone-OFC is split and used to provide LO-OFCs. For a 64GBd polarization multiplexing 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (PM-16QAM) WDM transmission, the tolerances of FO are up to about ±0.3THz and ±0.374THz for the 1st/3rd signal, and the 2nd signal, respectively, below the pre-forward error correction (FEC) bit error rate (BER) level of 1.25×10-2. Moreover, the maximum tolerance of FO linearly increases with the number of effective tones in LO-OFC. Further, extensive experiments with back-to-back connection are conducted to verify the performance. The tolerance of FO is up to >36 GHz for 36GBd PM-16QAM transmission with a 3-tone-LO-OFC below the BER level of 1.25×10-2. The proposed OFC based coherent architecture is a promising solution for intra-DC interconnections with a large FO.

Flexible coherent UDWDM-PON with dynamic user allocation based on limited-tunability lasers

Coherent wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technologies have leveraged the optical communication systems in core networks, increasing the fiber capacity by transmission with advanced modulation formats and mitigation of impairments with digital signal processing. However, these solutions are too expensive for access networks, where cost, power budget, and footprint are limited. Hence, the key technology will be developing low-cost coherent transceivers providing an excellent selectivity and giving high sensitivity, which allows high splitting ratios. This paper reports an experimental design of a low-cost coherent ultra-dense WDM passive optical network (UDWDM-PON) with 6.25 GHz channel spacing. The users’ optical network unit (ONU) is built employing coherent transceivers with two paired low-cost distributed feedback (DFB) lasers, one as the local oscillator and another as the transmitter, offering simplicity and low-cost hardware; likewise, the optical line terminal (OLT) at the central office can profit from the same design. The ONU DFB lasers have wavelengths with limited thermal tunability, controlled by a thermo-electric cooler, which is used to allocate the wavelengths. A medium access control (MAC) at the OLT manages the spectrum channel allocation for ONUs, demanding connection when activation is requested: the OLT furnishes an optical carrier wavelength for the ONU to obtain connection by a control algorithm, assigning a down-channel and another paired up-channel assigned to the ONU DFB transmitter. The MAC can reassign the channels because of interference or collision in a dynamic wavelength allocation. Measures in an activation process and in channel reassignment have been performed in environmental conditions, including control signals and the physical parameters of DFB lasers, demonstrating the practical viability of the PON scaling from 32 up to 256 wavelength channels.

Experimental estimation of inter-channel nonlinearity power by using differential pilot

Abstract In this paper, we present the first experimental demonstration of inter-channel nonlinearity (NL) estimation with differential pilot (DP). This method has a simplified encoding structure of transmitter and low complexity. The distribution of different components in the received signal spectrum can be differentiated with Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), and the inter-channel NL power can be obtained by power subtraction. To verify the practicability of this method, a 25-GBaud coherent quadrature-phase-shift-keying (QPSK) wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) experiment system is employed with the launch power of 0–10 dBm per channel over 900-km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF). The results demonstrate that the inter-channel NL power estimation error is less than 1.5 dB when launch power is larger than 4 dBm per channel. Therefore, this method has good practicability for the inter-channel NL power estimation of coherent WDM systems.

Performance of chip-scale optical frequency comb generators in coherent WDM communications.

Optical frequency combs have the potential to become key building blocks of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) communication systems. The strictly equidistant narrow-band spectral lines of a frequency comb can serve either as carriers for parallel WDM transmission or as local-oscillator (LO) tones for parallel coherent reception. When it comes to highly scalable WDM transceivers with compact form factor, chip-sale comb sources are of particular interest, and recent experiments have demonstrated the viability of such devices for high-speed communications with line rates of tens of Tbit/s. However, the output power of chip-scale comb sources is generally lower than that of their conventional discrete-element counterparts, thus requiring additional amplifiers and impairing the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR). In this paper, we investigate the influence of the power and optical carrier-to-noise ratio (OCNR) of the comb lines on the performance of the WDM link. We identify two distinctively different regimes, where the transmission performance is either limited by the comb source or by the link and the associated in-line amplifiers. We further investigate the impact of line-to-line power variations on the achievable OSNR and link capacity using a soliton Kerr frequency comb as a particularly interesting example. We believe that our findings will help to compare different comb generator types and to benchmark them with respect to the achievable transmission performance.

Coherent WDM transmission using quantum-dash mode-locked laser diodes as multi-wavelength source and local oscillator.

Quantum-dash (QD) mode-locked laser diodes (MLLD) lend themselves as chip-scale frequency comb generators for highly scalable wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) links in future data-center, campus-area, or metropolitan networks. Driven by a simple DC current, the devices generate flat broadband frequency combs, containing tens of equidistant optical tones with line spacings of tens of GHz. Here we show that QD-MLLDs can not only be used as multi-wavelength light sources at a WDM transmitter, but also as multi-wavelength local oscillators (LO) for parallel coherent reception. In our experiments, we demonstrate transmission of an aggregate net data rate of 3.9 Tbit/s (23 × 45 GBd PDM-QPSK, 7% FEC overhead) over 75 km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF). To the best of our knowledge, this represents the first demonstration of a coherent WDM link that relies on QD-MLLD both at the transmitter and the receiver.

Hardware-Efficient Signal Processing Technologies for Coherent PON Systems

Future passive optical network (PON) systems supporting more than 50 Gb/s/λ present a challenge for the use of intensity modulation direct detection (IM-DD). Since coherent technology improves the receiver sensitivity over that of IM-DD, it is a promising candidate for 100 Gb/s or higher PON systems. Introducing hardware-efficient signal processing technologies tailored to PON systems will help render coherent technology suitable for PON systems. We here review hardware-efficient signal processing technologies suitable for PON systems. We introduce two types of simplified adaptive equalization (AEQ), one which sacrifices differential group delay compensation (DGDC), and another which sacrifices some chromatic dispersion compensation but does provide DGDC. Transmission experiments on a 100 Gb/s/λ-based coherent wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) PON system showed that simplified AEQ without DGDC and with DGDC exhibited only 0.2 and 1.4 dB penalty, respectively, compared with conventional DSP. The additional penalty due to the maximum possible cumulative DGD was evaluated by numerical simulation. Conventional AEQ and the simplified AEQ with DGDC showed negligible penalty, but the simplified AEQ without DGDC showed a 1.4 dB penalty. We also introduce simplified carrier phase recovery (CPR) with interpolarization phase offset estimation, and this showed the same performance as the conventional DSP, in both experiment and simulation. Taking these results into account, 100 Gb/s/λ-based coherent WDM PON systems with the simplified AEQs in combination with the simplified CPR were shown to be able to support the loss budget required for eight ONU splits over an 80 km span of single mode fiber.

Comparison of Nonlinear Compensation Techniques for 400-Gb/s Coherent Multi-Band OFDM Super-Channels

The last few years, many studies have been published on the 3rd-order inverse Volterra series transfer function nonlinear equalizer (IVSTF-NLE) in long-haul optical communication systems. Nonetheless, no experimental work has been published on investigating the potential of the 3rd-order IVSTF-NLE for the compensation of Kerr nonlinearities in a long-haul wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) system consisting of high-bit rate super-channels, as high as 400 Gb/s. In this paper, we study experimentally the performance of a 3rd-order IVSTF-NLE in a coherent optical WDM system, with a central, 400-Gb/s, 4-band, dual-polarization (DP), 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) super-channel. We compare its performance against the performance of the digital back-propagation split-step Fourier (DBP-SSF) method for the compensation of nonlinearities after 10 × 100 km of ITU-T G.652 standard single mode fiber (SSMF). In the second part of this paper, we compare, via Monte Carlo simulations, the performance of the 3rd-order IVSTF-NLE and the DBP-SSF method, in terms of reach extension and computational complexity, after propagation through ITU-T G.652 SSMF and a ITU-T G.655 large effective area fiber (LEAF). By means of both experimental evaluation and simulations, we show that, in the presence of strong nonlinear effects, the 3rd-order IVSTF-NLE, which uses a single step per span, performs similarly with the two-steps-per-span DBP-SSF, whereas the eight-steps-per-span DBP-SSF is only marginally better but at the vast expense of computational complexity.

Coherent optical WDM systems for 1.6 Tb/s Ethernet over 40 km of single-mode fiber

Abstract Two 1.6 Tb/s coherent optical wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) systems targeting inter-data center links of up to 40-km reach over conventional single-mode fiber (CSMF) on C-band are proposed and numerically analyzed: a DP-QPSK-based 16 × 112 Gb/s system and a DP-16-QAM-based 8 × 224 Gb/s system. To satisfy the metro access space, noise and power transceiver characteristics are optimized, avoiding the use of any type of optical amplification or forward-error correction (FEC) scheme. Accordingly to the current Ethernet standard, feasibility of both 28 GBd architectures is hence numerically demonstrated at a very low bit-error-ratio (BER) threshold of 1 × 10−13, uncovering power sensitivities of −26.0 and −13.5 dBm and optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) sensitivities of 35 and 40 dB for the first and second architectures, respectively. Negligible transmission OSNR and power penalties with respect to the back-to-back (BtB) case are calculated, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the utilized DSP algorithms. Our simulation work also confirms that the 16-QAM-based scheme is more demanding in terms of OSNR and transmission power specifications than the 16-channel one, requiring approximately 12 dB more power and 5 dB more OSNR level at the transmitter laser outputs, with similar requirements at the receiver end. It is also demonstrated that laser linewidths of at most 1 MHz should be specified in both architectures, that the transmitter laser characteristics play a more appreciable role than those of the receiver laser, and that the frequency offset between these two lasers should be kept below 3 GHz. Our research work leverages the use of optical coherent technology at metro network level and claims for a necessary technological upgrade to such schemes for a forthcoming 1.6 Tb/s Ethernet standard to be feasible.

Carrier-phase-estimation algorithm featuring fast trackability for high-speed coherent WDM PON based on RSOA.

There have been substantial efforts to implement high-speed (>10 Gb/s) upstream transmission using reflective semiconductor optical amplifiers (RSOAs) in a coherent wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) passive optical network (PON). In such a network, it is necessary to estimate the carrier phase of upstream optical signal to retrieve the phase-modulated information created by RSOA. However, due to the severe waveform distortions caused by the limited modulation bandwidth of RSOA (typically less than 3 GHz), previously reported carrier phase estimation (CPE) algorithms cannot accurately estimate the carrier phase of high-speed quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) signal generated from the RSOA seeded by a distributed-feedback (DFB) laser. We propose a novel CPE method capable of tracking the carrier phase rapidly by using a small number of symbols (e.g., 15 symbols) even when the waveforms are severely distorted by the limited modulation bandwidth of RSOA. The proposed CPE method utilizes the linear relationship between the intensity modulation and phase modulation indices inherent in the semiconductor opto-electronic device. By using the proposed method, we demonstrate the transmission of 25.78-Gb/s QPSK signal in a 20-km long loopback fiber link. In this experiment, a commercial DFB laser (linewidth: 3 MHz) is used as the seed light instead of an expensive narrow-linewidth laser. Also shown through the experiment is that the proposed CPE method is highly unsusceptible to variations of parameters required in the proposed method, such as the number of test phases, the accuracy of linewidth enhancement factor, and the accuracy of the normalized amplitude of DC component.

Multi-wavelength coherent transmission using an optical frequency comb as a local oscillator.

Steadily increasing data rates of optical interfaces require spectrally efficient coherent transmission using higher-order modulation formats in combination with scalable wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) schemes. At the transmitter, optical frequency combs (OFC) lend themselves to particularly precise multi-wavelength sources for WDM transmission. In this work we demonstrate that these advantages can also be leveraged at the receiver by using an OFC as a highly scalable multi-wavelength local oscillator (LO) for coherent detection. In our experiments, we use a pair of OFC that rely on gain switching of injection-locked semiconductor lasers both for WDM transmission and intradyne reception. We synchronize the center frequency and the free spectral range of the receiver comb to the transmitter, keeping the intradyne frequencies for all data channels below 15 MHz. Using 13 WDM channels, we transmit an aggregate line rate (net data rate) of 1.104 Tbit/s (1.032 Tbit/s) over a 10 km long standard single mode fiber at a spectral efficiency of 5.16 bit/s/Hz. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of coherent WDM transmission using synchronized frequency combs as light source at the transmitter and as multi-wavelength LO at the receiver.

A flexible decision-aided maximum likelihood phase estimation in hybrid QPSK/OOK coherent optical WDM systems

Although decision-aided (DA) maximum likelihood (ML) phase estimation (PE) algorithm has been investigated intensively, block length effect impacts system performance and leads to the increasing of hardware complexity. In this paper, a flexible DA-ML algorithm is proposed in hybrid QPSK/OOK coherent optical wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) systems. We present a general cross phase modulation (XPM) model based on Volterra series transfer function (VSTF) method to describe XPM effects induced by OOK channels at the end of dispersion management (DM) fiber links. Based on our model, the weighted factors obtained from maximum likelihood method are introduced to eliminate the block length effect. We derive the analytical expression of phase error variance for the performance prediction of coherent receiver with the flexible DA-ML algorithm. Bit error ratio (BER) performance is evaluated and compared through both theoretical derivation and Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. The results show that our flexible DA-ML algorithm has significant improvement in performance compared with the conventional DA-ML algorithm as block length is a fixed value. Compared with the conventional DA-ML with optimum block length, our flexible DA-ML can obtain better system performance. It means our flexible DA-ML algorithm is more effective for mitigating phase noise than conventional DA-ML algorithm.

Decision-aided maximum likelihood phase estimation with optimum block length in hybrid QPSK/16QAM coherent optical WDM systems

We propose a general model to entirely describe XPM effects induced by 16QAM channels in hybrid QPSK/16QAM wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) systems. A power spectral density (PSD) formula is presented to predict the statistical properties of XPM effects at the end of dispersion management (DM) fiber links. We derive the analytical expression of phase error variance for optimizing block length of QPSK channel coherent receiver with decision-aided (DA) maximum-likelihood (ML) phase estimation (PE). With our theoretical analysis, the optimum block length can be employed to improve the performance of coherent receiver. Bit error rate (BER) performance in QPSK channel is evaluated and compared through both theoretical derivation and Monte Carlo simulation. The results show that by using the DA-ML with optimum block length, bit signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement over DA-ML with fixed block length of 10, 20 and 40 at BER of 10−3 is 0.18dB, 0.46dB and 0.65dB, respectively, when in-line residual dispersion is 0ps/nm.

Heterodyne detection and transmission of 60-Gbaud PDM-QPSK signal with SE of 4b/s/Hz.

We experimentally demonstrate 8 × 240-Gb/s super-Nyquist wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) polarization-division-multiplexing quadrature-phase-shift-keying (PDM-QPSK) signal transmission on a 50-GHz grid with a net spectral efficiency (SE) of 4b/s/Hz adopting hardware-efficient simplified heterodyne detection. 9-ary quadrature-amplitude-modulation-like (9QAM-like) processing based on multi-modulus blind equalization (MMBE) is adopted to reduce analog-to-digital converter (ADC) bandwidth requirement and improve receiver sensitivity. The transmission distance at the soft-decision forward-error-correction (SD-FEC) threshold of 2 × 10(-2) is 2 × 420 km based on digital post filtering while largely extended to over 5 × 420 km based on 9QAM-like processing, which well illustrates 9QAM-like processing is more efficient for heterodyne coherent WDM system. Moreover, only two ADC channels are needed for simplified heterodyne detection of one 60-Gbaud PDM-QPSK WDM channel, and thus only one commercial oscilloscope (OSC) with two input ports can work well for each WDM channel.

Characteristics of XPM in coherent optical OFDM WDM transmission systems

We use a self-correlation technique to extract the inter-channel nonlinear effects i.e. cross phase modulation (XPM) induced phase noise and XPM-induced polarization scattering for analyzing the characteristics of XPM in coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) transmission systems under different dispersion compensation (DC) ratios and different walk-off values. Through the analysis, we can clearly see how the DC ratio acts on the XPM by applying this technique. After transmitting 1500km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF), 12.3dB phase noise is induced when the DC ratio is changed from 0% to 105%. While the walk-off is varied from 1.6ps/km to 12.8ps/km, almost 10.6dB phase noise is eliminated. Additionally, the phase noise is verified as the dominant distortion in dual-polarization OFDM systems while the XPM-induced polarization crosstalk is proved to be the decisive distortion in dual-polarization QPSK coherent experiment.

The reduction of the LO number for heterodyne coherent detection

Relative to homodyne coherent detection, heterodyne coherent detection has simple architecture because no 90° hybrid and only half number of photodiodes and analog-to-digital convertor (ADC) chips are required. We experimentally demonstrate that the architecture of heterodyne coherent receivers can be further simplified. When the frequency offset is one half of the channel frequency spacing, one local oscillator (LO) laser can be used for two neighboring wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) channels, and therefore the number of LO lasers can be reduced into half compared to homodyne detection. We experimentally demonstrate simplified heterodyne coherent detection of 4 × 196.8-Gb/s polarization-division-multiplexing carrier-suppressed return-to-zero quadrature-phase-shift-keying (PDM-CSRZ-QPSK) modulation after transmission over 1040-km single-mode fiber (SMF)-28 on a 50-GHz grid with bit-error ratio (BER) smaller than pre-forward-error-correction (pre-FEC) limit of 3.8 × 10(-3). To our best knowledge, 196.8 Gb/s is the highest bit rate per channel for heterodyne coherent WDM transmission system. An arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) instead of wavelength selective switch (WSS) is used at the transmitter to spectrally shape and multiplex the WDM signal. We also experimentally demonstrate that heterodyne detection causes 3-dB optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) penalty at the BER of 3.8 × 10(-3) for a certain single channel compared to homodyne detection.

Super-dense WDM detection technique with single coherent receiver employing wavelength-swept local light

A novel coherent detection technique for super-dense wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) signals is described. By shifting the local light wavelength periodically, WDM signals are converted to electrical time-division-multiplexing data at a coherent receiver. This enables a single wavelength-swept local light source and coherent receiver pair to detect WDM signals. Applying this technique to coherent WDM passive optical networks greatly simplifies the optical line terminal configuration and local light wavelength control for the upstream. The demodulation of two-channel 1.5 Gbit/s signals is shown as a proof-of-concept.

Demonstration of a Flexible Bandwidth Optical Transmitter/Receiver System Scalable to Terahertz Bandwidths

This paper demonstrates a flexible bandwidth-modulation-capable and bandwidth scalable transmitter and receiver technique based on dynamic optical arbitrary waveform generation (OAWG) and measurement (OAWM). This technique generates and receives broadband arbitrary optical waveforms by dividing the waveform spectrum into overlapping spectral slices of bandwidth manageable with existing electronics. The OAWG transmitter produced 2-ns, 60-GHz data waveforms using only 5.5 GHz of analog bandwidth by coherently combining six 10-GHz spectral slices. Measurements were performed using an OAWM receiver with two 30-GHz spectral slices using 15 GHz of analog bandwidth. Experimental demonstrations verify the modulation format independence and flexible bandwidth capabilities of OAWG transmitters and OAWM receivers through the generation of the following waveforms: binary phase-shifted keying (BPSK), coherent wavelength division multiplexing (CoWDM) with 5 and 15 BPSK subcarriers, and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with 54 BPSK subcarriers. All waveforms had a bit-error-rate performance better than 7.8 × 10-5.

Offset-QAM based coherent WDM for spectral efficiency enhancement

Optically multiplexed multi-carrier systems with channel spacing reduced to the symbol rate per carrier are highly susceptible to inter-channel crosstalk, which places stringent requirements for the specifications of system components and hinders the use of high-level formats. In this paper, we investigate the performance benefits of using offset 4-, 16-, and 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) in coherent wavelength division multiplexing (CoWDM). We compare this system with recently reported Nyquist WDM and no-guard-interval optical coherent orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, and show that the presented system greatly relaxes the requirements for device specifications and enhances the spectral efficiency by enabling the use of high-level QAM. The achieved performance can approach the theoretical limits using practical components.