Current Optical Communication Research Articles

Finite-size security proof of binary-modulation continuous-variable quantum key distribution using only heterodyne measurement

Continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) has many practical advantages including compatibility with current optical communication technology. Implementation using heterodyne measurements is particularly attractive since it eliminates the need for active phase locking of the remote pair of local oscillators, but the full security of CV QKD with discrete modulation was only proved for a protocol using homodyne measurements. Here we propose an all-heterodyne CV-QKD protocol with binary modulation and prove its security against general attacks in the finite-key regime. Although replacing a homodyne measurement with a heterodyne measurement would be naively expected to incur a 3-dB penalty in the rate-distance curve, our proof achieves a key rate with only a 1-dB penalty.

Low crosstalk 125 μm cladding heterogeneous six-core few-mode fiber with air-hole array and trench structure

In order to be compatible with the current optical fiber communication network, we propose a 125 μm diameter heterogeneous six-core two linear polarization modes fiber with air-hole array and trench (HAT) structure. The coupled power theory and finite element method (FEM) are used to investigate inter-core crosstalk (ICXT), bending loss, and other properties. The HAT structure can effectively suppress ICXT; and the maximum ICXT is less than −38 dB/100 km in C + L band. The effective refractive index difference (Δneff) between modes is greater than 3 × 10-3, inter-mode crosstalk (IMXT) can be ignored. The maximum intrinsic loss is 0.187 dB/km; relative core multiplicity factor reaches 32.21. The relative spatial efficiency is 18 times that of traditional single-mode fibers. This fiber can be produced by chemical vapor deposition and existing optical fiber manufacturing technology. The designed fiber can be directly connected to the communication network to reduce the cost of equipment renewal, and the communication capacity can be increased by 18 times.

TiN/Ti3C2 Heterojunction Microfiber-Enhanced Four-Wave Mixing-Based All-Optical Wavelength Converter

As a novel nanomaterial, the TiN/Ti3C2 heterojunction has been demonstrated to possess exceptional optoelectronic properties, offering significant potential for applications in fields such as communication, optical sensors, and image processing. The rapid evolution of the internet demands higher communication capacity and information processing speed. In this context, all-optical wavelength conversion, a pivotal technique in all-optical signal processing, holds paramount importance in overcoming electronic bottlenecks, enhancing wavelength utilization, resolving wavelength competition, and mitigating network congestion. Utilizing the idle light generated through the four-wave mixing (FWM) process accurately mimics the bit patterns of signal channels. This process is inherently rapid and theoretically capable of surpassing electronic bottlenecks with ease. By placing an optical filter at the fiber output end to allow idle light passage while blocking pump and signal light, the output becomes a wavelength-converted replica of the original bitstream. It has been verified that TiN/Ti3C2 heterojunction-coated microfiber (THM) exhibits outstanding third-order nonlinear coefficients. Building upon this, we achieved a THM-enhanced FWM all-optical wavelength converter, resulting in a ~4.48 dB improvement in conversion efficiency. Compared to conventional high-nonlinear fibers, this compact device significantly reduces fiber length and can be easily integrated into current high-speed optical communication networks. It demonstrates broad prospects in the realms of all-optical signal processing, robotic applications, ultra-high-speed communication, and beyond.

DNN-based optical performance monitoring and its application for soft failure localization by multipoint estimation

In current optical communication networks, it is becoming increasingly important to use optical performance monitoring (OPM), which monitors the transmission characteristics of optical signals, to detect early degradation of features that may affect communication quality. This paper describes a method to realize OPM by training a deep neural network (DNN) with data obtained from digital coherent transceivers. In addition, we propose a dataset generation method, Data Augmentation using Differential Image (DADI), to enable the DNN to train with fewer data. We demonstrate that this method simultaneously classifies the optical signal to noise ratio and polarization mode dispersion with high accuracy. Furthermore, we apply DNN-based OPM to detect and localize soft failure in a multi-span environment. We develop a method to identify the location of soft failure by collecting information from DNN-based OPM estimated at multiple points in multi-span optical transmission links. We demonstrate that the method correctly localizes the soft failure with more than 90% accuracy on average (min, 85%; max, 98%) under single-channel experimental conditions.

Performance Comparison of Repetition Coding MIMO Optical Wireless Communications with Distinct Light Beams.

In current optical wireless communications (OWC) oriented research works, the various multiple input multiple output (MIMO) techniques are introduced and utilized to enhance the coverage performance. Objectively, this Lambertian light beam based MIMO research paradigm neglects the light beam diversity and the potential performance gains. In this work, the distinct non-Lambertian light beams of commercially available light emitting diodes (LEDs) were adopted to configure MIMO OWC links. Specifically, the homogenous and heterogeneous non-Lambertian MIMO configurations were constituted in typical indoor scenarios. Moreover, applying the repetition coding (RC) MIMO algorithm with low complexity, a spatial coverage performance comparison was made between the several above mentioned non-Lambertian configurations and the well-discussed Lambertian MIMO configuration. Numerical results illustrate that the homogeneous NSPW light beam configuration could provide a more than 30 dB average signal to noise ratio (SNR), while the achievable average SNR of the heterogeneous light beam configuration was up to 28.77 dB. On the other side, the counterpart of the Lambertian configuration achieved just about 27.00 dB. Objectively, this work paves the fundamental and essential way for the further design and optimization of MIMO OWC in this novel light beam dimension.

Low-loss off-axis curved waveguide grating demultiplexer.

Current optical communication systems rely on the use of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to keep up with the increasing data rate requirements. The wavelength demultiplexer is the key component to implement WDM systems. In this Letter, we design and experimentally demonstrate a demultiplexer based on a curved grating waveguide geometry that separates eight channels with a spacing of 10 nm (1249 GHz) around the central wavelength of 1550 nm. The fabricated device shows very low insertion loss (∼1dB) and a crosstalk (XT) below -25dB. This device leverages metamaterial index engineering to implement the lateral cladding on one side of the waveguide. This makes it possible to design a waveguide grating with highly directional lateral emission by operating in a regime where diffraction into the silica upper cladding is frustrated, thus suppressing losses due to off-chip radiation.

Laser Tuning in Layered h-BN Crystals.

Integrated optics shows great potential in the current optical communication systems, sensor technology, optical computers, and other fields. Tunable laser technology within a certain range is the key to achieving on-chip optical integration; to realize which, Raman scattering is a competitive method that can effectively transfer incident laser energy to optical phonons due to the photon-phonon interaction. Here, we take hexagonal boron nitride as the energy conversion medium, and based on the angle-resolved polarized Raman spectroscopy, it is found that when laser polarization vector ei ⊥ c axis, the spectrum obtains maximal scattering across the cross section and a minimal depolarization ratio. At room temperature, h-BN obtains an output signal with a wavelength of 522.8 nm and a full-width at half-maximum of 0.24 nm under the excitation of 488 nm pump laser, and the depolarization ratio is 0.09 (theoretically, it is 0, and this difference is due to experimental errors). And then, within the temperature range of 80∼420 K, the scattered light wavelength shows a high-precision shift of 0.006 nm/25 K, indicating that continuous wavelength tuning has been successfully achieved in h-BN.

Trading off security and practicability to explore high-speed and long-haul chaotic optical communication.

Recent demonstrations of chaos-based secure communication have proven the feasibility of secured transmission of high-speed (tens of Gbit/s) signals over certain distances (∼100-km), which bring hope for secure communication from theoretical analysis to practical applications. So far, the chaos-based secure communication system with chaos-masking (CMS) encryption is considered as one of the most important and feasible schemes. In this paper, an optical chaotic carrier generated by an opto-electronic oscillator is used to encrypt 112-Gbit/s message by CMS encryption for data transmission over a 1040-km single-mode-fiber. The message is successfully decrypted by combining coherent detection and our proposed blind decryption algorithms, which can successfully separate the chaotic carrier and the message with the bit-error-rate (BER) below the forward error correction (FEC) threshold. Experimental results show that the coherent detection combined digital signal processing algorithms may be a possible way to promote the practical applications of chaotic optical communication in the future. In addition, this paper reveals that the security of the CMS encryption may be not high enough for those systems requiring rigorous confidentiality. Subsequently, we further discuss the bottlenecks encountered in current high-speed chaotic optical communication systems and analyze how to improve and weight the security and practicability.

Modelling and performance analysis of DWDM passive optical network

Passive optical networks are emerging as the main technology for building access networks. The current metropolitan optical communication networks operate at 1Gbps, which appears to be insufficient for the future development and exponential growth of traffic from IP services. The existing various traffic-intensive services and the growing interest in 4K video content and streaming services require the introduction of new solutions within passive optical networks (PON). A promising option is the combination of 10 Gbps and above high-speed data transmission with spectral multiplexing. DWDM will provide the required high spectral efficiency, but in contrast will require the use of a proper modulation scheme to achieve a longer distance. In this paper a model for performance analysis and solving optimization problems for DWDM-PON networks is developed. Different signal modulations are considered and a comparative analysis is performed. The behaviour of the system at different input parameters is modelled. Performance analysis is performed by evaluating the spectral characteristics and values of BER and Q-factor.

Polarization-independent single-photon switch based on a fiber-optical Sagnac interferometer for quantum communication networks.

An essential component of future quantum networks is an optical switch capable of dynamically routing single photons. Here we implement such a switch, based on a fiber-optical Sagnac interferometer design. The routing is implemented with a pair of fast electro-optical telecom phase modulators placed inside the Sagnac loop, such that each modulator acts on an orthogonal polarization component of the single photons, in order to yield polarization-independent capability that is crucial for several applications. We obtain an average extinction ratio of more than 19 dB between both outputs of the switch. Our experiment is built exclusively with commercial off-the-shelf components, thus allowing direct compatibility with current optical communication systems.

Coherent optical communications enhanced by machine intelligence

Accuracy in discriminating between different received coherent signals is integral to the operation of many free-space communications protocols, and is often difficult when the receiver measures a weak signal. Here we design an optical communication scheme that uses balanced homodyne detection in combination with an unsupervised generative machine learning and convolutional neural network (CNN) system, and demonstrate its efficacy in a realistic simulated coherent quadrature phase shift keyed (QPSK) communications system. Additionally, we design the neural network system such that it autonomously learns to correct for the noise associated with a weak QPSK signal, which is distributed to the receiver prior to the implementation of the communications. We find that the scheme significantly reduces the overall error probability of the communications system, achieving the classical optimal limit. We anticipate that these results will allow for a significant enhancement of current classical and quantum coherent optical communications technologies.

Ultrafast and broadband photodetectors based on a perovskite/organic bulk heterojunction for large-dynamic-range imaging

Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite (OIHP) photodetectors that simultaneously achieve an ultrafast response and high sensitivity in the near-infrared (NIR) region are prerequisites for expanding current monitoring, imaging, and optical communication capbilities. Herein, we demonstrate photodetectors constructed by OIHP and an organic bulk heterojunction (BHJ) consisting of a low-bandgap nonfullerene and polymer, which achieve broadband response spectra up to 1 μm with a highest external quantum efficiency of approximately 54% at 850 nm, an ultrafast response speed of 5.6 ns and a linear dynamic range (LDR) of 191 dB. High sensitivity, ultrafast speed and a large LDR are preeminent prerequisites for the practical application of photodetectors. Encouragingly, due to the high-dynamic-range imaging capacity, high-quality visible-NIR actual imaging is achieved by employing the OIHP photodetectors. We believe that state-of-the-art OIHP photodetectors can accelerate the translation of solution-processed photodetector applications from the laboratory to the imaging market.

Research on Key Technologies of Mode Multiplexing / Demultiplexing

The rapid growth of Internet capacity has driven the continuous progress of optical fiber communication technology. The transmission capacity of the current optical fiber communication system is close to the limit of single-mode optical fiber transmission. The mode-division multiplexing technology based on few-mode optical fiber can increase the communication capacity exponentially, which is the current research hotspot. Mode multiplexing and demultiplexing are one of the key technologies to realize modular division multiplexing. This paper expounds the existing mode multiplexing / demultiplexing schemes and their corresponding research progress, and discusses the current problems and future development application prospects of optical fiber communication module division multiplexing technologies.

Closed-Form Expressions of Ergodic Capacity and MMSE Achievable Sum Rate for MIMO Jacobi and Rayleigh Fading Channels

Multimode/multicore fibers are expected to provide an attractive solution to overcome the capacity limit of the current optical communication system. In the presence of strong crosstalk between modes and/or cores, the squared singular values of the input/output transfer matrix follow the law of the Jacobi ensemble of random matrices. Assuming that the channel state information is only available at the receiver, we derive a new expression for the ergodic capacity of the MIMO Jacobi fading channel. The proposed expression involves double integrals which can be easily evaluated for a high-dimensional MIMO scenario. Moreover, the method used in deriving this expression does not appeal to the classical one-point correlation function of the random matrix model. Using a limiting transition between Jacobi and associated Laguerre polynomials, we derive a similar formula for the ergodic capacity of the MIMO Rayleigh fading channel. Moreover, we derive a new exact closed-form expressions for the achievable sum rate of MIMO Jacobi and Rayleigh fading channels employing linear minimum mean squared error (MMSE) receivers. The analytical results are compared to the results obtained by Monte Carlo simulations and the related results available in the literature, which shows perfect agreement.

Using the Belinfante momentum to retrieve the polarization state of light inside waveguides

Current day high speed optical communication systems employ photonic circuits using platforms such as silicon photonics. In these systems, the polarization state of light drifts due to effects such as polarization mode dispersion and nonlinear phenomena generated by photonic circuit building blocks. As the complexity, the number, and the variety of these building blocks grows, the demand increases for an in-situ polarization determination strategy. Here, we show that the transfer of the Belinfante momentum to particles in the evanescent field of waveguides depends in a non-trivial way on the polarization state of light within that waveguide. Surprisingly, we find that the maxima and minima of the lateral force are not produced with circularly polarized light, corresponding to the north and south poles of the Poincaré sphere. Instead, the maxima are shifted along the great circle of the sphere due to the phase differences between the scattered TE and TM components of light. This effect allows for an unambiguous reconstruction of the local polarization state of light inside a waveguide. Importantly, this technique depends on interaction with only the evanescent tails of the fields, allowing for a minimally invasive method to probe the polarization within a photonic chip.

High-speed uni-traveling carrier photodiode for 2 μm wavelength application

Current optical communication systems operating at the 1.55 μm wavelength band may not be able to continually satisfy the growing demand on data capacity within the next few years. Opening a new spectral window around the 2 μm wavelength with recently developed hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber and a thulium-doped fiber amplifier is a promising solution to increase transmission capacity due to the low-loss and wide-bandwidth properties of these components at this wavelength band. However, as a key component, the performance of current high-speed photodetectors at the 2 μm wavelength is still not comparable with those at the 1.55 μm wavelength band, which chokes the feasibility of the new spectral window. In this work, we demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, a high-speed uni-traveling carrier photodiode for 2 μm applications with InGaAs/GaAsSb type-II multiple quantum wells as the absorption region, which is lattice-matched to InP. The devices have the responsivity of 0.07 A/W at 2 μm wavelength, and the device with a 10 μm diameter shows a 3 dB bandwidth of 25 GHz at −3 V bias voltage. To the best of our knowledge, this device is the fastest photodiode among all group III-V and group IV photodetectors working in the 2 μm wavelength range.

Design and Performance of a Multipurpose 2-D Photonic Crystal Device Based on Y Couplers

This paper reports on the design of a multipurpose photonic device based on 2-D photonic crystals which uses Y couplers in its structure that is very efficient when employed as a switch in optical communication systems and possesses a very high sensitivity not only if used as a biophotonic sensor to detect refractive index changes but also as a pressure sensor to sense pressure changes. The performance of the device is analyzed in terms of photonic bandgap structure, transmission power, electrical field distribution, resonance wavelength, and sensitivity by making use of the methods of the plane wave expansion (PWE) and the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD). The design is optimized to allow maximum power transmission so no constraints are imposed on the device detector and to achieve high sensitivity in biosensors’ applications allowing, thus, not only sensing very low analyte concentrations but also nondestructively detecting and analyzing nanoparticles. We propose here a highly efficient switching/coupling device suitable for current optical communication systems with a transmission power that could reach 98.16%. If the same platform is used as a biosensor, it has a refractive index sensitivity of 1055 nm/RIU, the highest value so far reported in the literature. If used as a pressure sensor, it has a sensitivity of 23.057 nm/GPa in the pressure range 0 to 1 GPa, which is second highest sensitivity so far reported.

Experimental AND and OR Logic Gates With MZI and SOA Using PAM Modulation

One of the main limitations of optical communication systems is the current need for optoelectronic conversions in intermediate devices, which do not reach the transmission rates of optical fibers of terabits per second. In this work, we investigated the obtaining of logic gates through a configuration of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer with a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) as the unbalancing element of the interferometer. We experimentally studied three different scenarios of input power for a continuous wave regime and one scenario for the PAM regime, both with varying levels of gain of the SOA. As a result, we obtained the AND and OR logic gates in all scenarios in a wide range of gain of the SOA, besides the logic functions 0 and 1 in some of the cases. We confirm the quality of these logic gates by the precision rate regarding the threshold of 0.4 dB above and below the central limit, according to recommendations from the literature. We highlight that the technique used in this experiment is much less complex than most of those described in the literature. The use of pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) suggests a simpler way for controlling logic gates, once we can obtain those by simply changing the injection current applied by the SOA. The experimental obtaining of such logic gates is relevant for all-optical logic circuits that are proposed to optimize the current optical communication systems.

Coherent 16 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (16QAM) Optical Communication Systems

Coherent optical fiber communications for data rates of 100Gbit/s and beyond have recently been studied extensively primarily because high sensitivity of coherent receivers could extend the transmission distance. Spectrally efficient modulation techniques such as M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) can be employed for coherent optical links. The integration of multi-level modulation formats based on coherent technologies with wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) systems is key to meet the aggregate bandwidth demand. This paper reviews coherent 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM) systems to scale the network capacity and maximum reach of current optical communication systems to accommodate traffic growth. Full Text: PDF ReferencesK. Kikuchi, "Fundamentals of Coherent Optical Fiber Communications", J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 157-179, 2016. CrossRef S. Tsukamoto, D.-S. Ly-Gagnon, K. Katoh, and K. Kikuchi, "Coherent Demodulation of 40-Gbit/s Polarization-Multiplexed QPSK Signals with16-GHz Spacing after 200-km Transmission", Proc. OFc, Paper PDP29, (2005). DirectLink K. Kikuchi, "Coherent Optical Communication Technology", Proc. OFC, Paper Th4F.4, (2015). CrossRef J. M. Kahn and K.-P. Ho, "Spectral efficiency limits and modulation/detection techniques for DWDM systems", IEEE J. Sel. Topics Quantum Electron., vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 259–272, (2004). CrossRef S. Tsukamoto, K. Katoh, and K. Kikuchi, "Coherent demodulation of optical multilevel phase-shift-keying signals using homodyne detection and digital signal processing", IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 18, no. 10, pp. 1131–1133, (2006). CrossRef Y. Mori, C. Zhang, K. Igarashi, K. Katoh, and K. Kikuchi, "Unrepeated 200-km transmission of 40-Gbit/s 16-QAM signals using digital coherent receiver", Opt. Exp., vol. 17, no. 32, pp. 1435–1441, (2009). CrossRef H. Nakashima, Et al., "Digital Nonlinear Compensation Technologies in Coherent Optical Communication Systems", Proc. OFC, Paper W1G.5, (2017). CrossRef S. J. Savory, "Digital filters for coherent optical receivers", Opt. Exp., vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 804–817, (2008). CrossRef D. S. Millar, T. Koike-Akino, S. Ö. Arık, K. Kojima, K. Parsons, T. Yoshida, and T. Sugihara, "High-dimensional modulation for coherent optical communications systems", Opt. Express, vol. 22, no. 7, pp 8798-8812, (2014). CrossRef R. Griffin and A. Carter, "Optical differential quadrature phase-shift key (oDQPSK) for high capacity optical transmission", Proc. OFC, Paper WX6, (2002). DirectLink K. Kikuchi, "Digital coherent optical communication systems: fundamentals and future prospects", IEICE Electron. Exp., vol. 8, no. 20, pp. 1642–1662, (2011). CrossRef F. Derr, "Optical QPSK transmission system with novel digital receiver concept", Electron Lett., vol. 27, no. 23, pp. 2177–2179, (1991). CrossRef R. No’e, "Phase noise tolerant synchronous QPSK receiver concept with digital I&Q baseband processing", Proc. OECC, Paper 16C2-5, (2004). DirectLink D.-S. Ly-Gagnon, S. Tsukamoto, K. Katoh, and K. Kikuchi, "Coherent detection of optical quadrature phase-shift keying signals with carrier phase estimation", J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 12–21, (2006). CrossRef M. Taylor, "Coherent detection method using DSP for demodulation of signal and subsequent equalization of propagation impairments", IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 674–676, (2004). CrossRef S. Tsukamoto, K. Katoh, and K. Kikuchi, "Unrepeated transmission of 20-Gb/s optical quadrature phase-shift-keying signal over 200-km standard single-mode fiber based on digital processing of homodyne-detected signal for Group-velocity dispersion compensation", IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 18, no. 9, pp. 1016–1018, (2006). CrossRef S. Tsukamoto, Y. Ishikawa, and K. Kikuchi, "Optical Homodyne Receiver Comprising Phase and Polarization Diversities with Digital Signal Processing", Proc. ECOC, Paper Mo4.2.1, (2006). CrossRef K. Kikuchi and S. Tsukamoto, "Evaluation of Sensitivity of the Digital Coherent Receiver", J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 20, no. 13, pp. 1817–1822, (2008). CrossRef S. Ishimura and K. Kikuchi, "Multi-dimensional Permutation Modulation Aiming at Both High Spectral Efficiency and High Power Efficiency", Proc. OFC/NFOEC, Paper M3A.2, (2014). CrossRef F. I. El-Nahal and A. H. M. Husein, "Radio over fiber access network architecture employing RSOA with downstream OQPSK and upstream re-modulated OOK data", (Optik) Int. J. Light Electron Opt., vol. 123, no. 14, pp: 1301-1303, (2012). CrossRef T. Koike-Akino, D. S. Millar, K. Kojima, and K. Parsons, "Eight-Dimensional Modulation for Coherent Optical Communications", Proc. ECOC, Paper Tu.3.C.3, (2013). DirectLink B. Sklar, Digital communications: Fundamentals and Applications, Prentice-Hall, (2001).

Integrated (de)multiplexer for orbital angular momentum fiber communication

The quickly increasing data transfer load requires an urgent revolution in current optical communication. Orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing is a potential candidate with its ability to considerably enhance the capacity of communication. However, the lack of a compact, efficient, and integrated OAM (de)multiplexer prevents it from being widely applied. By attaching vortex gratings onto the facets of a few-mode fiber, we demonstrate an integrated fiber-based OAM (de)multiplexer. A vortex grating fabricated on the fiber facet enables the direct multiplexing of OAM states at one port and the demultiplexing of OAM states at the other port. The measured bit error rate of the carrier signal after propagating through a 5-km few-mode fiber confirms the validity and effectiveness of the proposed approach. The scheme offers advantages in future high-capacity OAM communication based on optical fiber.