Optical Pilot Tone Research Articles

Thin-film lithium niobate-based electro-optic comb cloning for self-homodyne coherent communication.

As the optical communication industry advances, metropolitan area networks (MANs) and radio access networks (RANs) are extensively deployed on a large scale, demanding energy-efficient integrated light sources and simplified digital signal processing (DSP) technologies. The emergence of thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) has given rise to high-performance, energy-efficient on-chip modulators, making on-chip optical frequency comb (OFC) more appealing. Owing to the phase uniformity and stability of this chip-scale device, it has been possible to eliminate the carrier frequency phase estimation (CPE) in DSP stacks using comb-clone-enabled self-homodyne detection. Here we report the first use, to our knowledge, of a TFLN on-chip electro-optic (EO) frequency comb to realize comb cloning and self-homodyne coherent detection. We transmit three optical pilot tones and eight data channels encoded with 20 Gbaud polarization-multiplexed 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (PM-16-QAM) over 10 km and 80 km standard single-mode fibers. The bit error ratios (BERs) of the eight channels reach below 10-3, a result made possible by our on-chip comb. The scalability and mass producibility of on-chip EO combs, combined with the simplified DSP, show potential in our proposed fifth-generation (5G) RAN and MAN transmission scheme.

Experimental demonstration of constant amplitude modulation heterodyne interferometry.

In the space gravitational wave detection, numerous laser interferometer strategies have been proposed to reduce the complexity of traditional heterodyne interferometers. Previously, we proposed a novel interferometric strategy and simulated its effectiveness, called CAM (constant amplitude modulation) heterodyne interferometry. Compared with other methods, the CAM can introduce the OPT (optical pilot tone) for the common-mode noise rejection. In this paper, we present the first, to our knowledge, experimental verification of this technique. The experimental results indicate that OPT can successfully eliminate sampling jitter, enabling the corrected noise to meet the requirements of space gravitational wave detection. This provides a new approach for further optical optimization and noise elimination in the future.

Constant amplitude modulation heterodyne interferometry.

Laser interferometer with picometer precision is a key technology in the space gravitational wave detection. Many interferometry strategies have been put forward for the multiple purposes in the past 10 yr. We propose a new interferometry method, called constant amplitude modulation (CAM) heterodyne interferometry. Differently, the CAM provides an optical pilot tone (OPT) for the noise correction theme. Compared with the analog pilot tone, the OPT can record and correct more noises, such as the analog to digital converter sampling jitter, the photodetector noise and the analog front-end noise. From the discussion, the modulated depth ϕmodulate=1.375 rad and the power ratio of the beam split n=0.432 are the best choice for the CAM-modulated parameter. Moreover, a simulated case has been implemented for the verification of the CAM strategy. Therefore, the CAM gives us another excellent choice in the optical design of the interferometer.

Experimental Investigation of Link Impairments in Pilot Tone Aided Superchannel Transmission

We investigate the performance of single-pilot-tone locked frequency comb-based superchannel transmission for distances up to 1200km. In our scheme, electro-optic transmitter and receiver combs are locked by leaving one of the transmitter carriers unmodulated and regenerating the receiver comb via optical injection locking. This approach significantly reduces carrier offsets and therefore leads to reduced digital signal processing complexity. We experimentally assess how transmission impairments such as noise added by optical amplifiers and fiber nonlinearities affect the quality of the comb regeneration. Our results show that while the operating conditions are more stringent at longer distances, the single pilot is robust to impairments. At optimal launch power, similar performance with respect to an intradyne receiver is observed, showing that the optical pilot tones can be co-transmitted with data channels even at distances spanning hundreds of kilometer. The total superchannel spectral efficiency (throughput), including the pilot tone and guardbands, is 9.6 bits/s/Hz (12 Tbit/s) after 480 km and 8.4 bits/s/Hz (10.5 Tbit/s) after 960km.

12 b/s/Hz Spectral Efficiency Over the C-band Based on Comb-Based Superchannels

We present transmission of three 50 × 24 Gbaud PM-256QAM superchannels with an overall spectral efficiency of 12 b/s/Hz over the entire C-band. Each comb-based superchannel combines a single shared optical pilot tone with a low-overhead pilot-based DSP. The pilot tone is used to lock the transmitter and the receiver comb seed lasers, suppressing carrier offsets. Combined with optimized insertion ratio of the digital pilot symbols, the total overhead is minimized, avoiding any excess loss in spectral efficiency. Our results demonstrate the feasibility to exploit the unique properties of frequency combs in the design of high spectral efficiency multi-Tb/s superchannels.

Frequency Comb-Based WDM Transmission Systems Enabling Joint Signal Processing

We review the use of optical frequency combs in wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) fiber optic communication systems. In particular, we focus on the unique possibilities that are opened up by the stability of the comb-line spacing and the phase coherence between the lines. We give an overview of different techniques for the generation of optical frequency combs and review their use in WDM systems. We discuss the benefits of the stable line spacing of frequency combs for creating densely-packed optical superchannels with high spectral efficiency. Additionally, we discuss practical considerations when implementing frequency-comb-based transmitters. Furthermore, we describe several techniques for comb-based superchannel receivers that enables the phase coherence between the lines to be used to simplify or increase the performance of the digital carrier recovery. The first set of receiver techniques is based on comb-regeneration from optical pilot tones, enabling low-overhead self-homodyne detection. The second set of techniques takes advantage of the phase coherence by sharing phase information between the channels through joint digital signal processing (DSP) schemes. This enables a lower DSP complexity or a higher phase-noise tolerance.

10 Tb/s PM-64QAM Self-Homodyne Comb-Based Superchannel Transmission With 4% Shared Pilot Tone Overhead

We demonstrate transmission of a comb-based 10 Tb/s 50 $\times$ 20 Gbaud PM-64QAM superchannel using frequency comb regeneration to reduce carrier offsets and allow for self-homodyne detection. The regeneration is enabled by transmitting two optical pilot tones which are filtered and recovered in the receiver using optical injection locking and an electrical phase-locked loop. We show that by utilizing frequency combs together with optical pilot tones, self-homodyne detection similar to systems using one pilot tone per wavelength channel, can be achieved. Sharing the overhead for pilot tones reduces the complexity and limits the overhead to 4%. This enabled a total superchannel spectral efficiency of 7.7 b/s/Hz. To evaluate the performance, we perform both back-to-back measurements and transmission over 80 km of standard single-mode fiber. Successful self-homodyne detection of all 50 data channels in the 10-nm-wide superchannel demonstrates that the spectral coherence from frequency combs, combined with the use of optical pilots, can overcome limitations arising from frequency offset and phase noise in high-order QAM transmission while keeping the pilot overhead low.

High Spectral Efficiency PM-128QAM Comb-Based Superchannel Transmission Enabled by a Single Shared Optical Pilot Tone

We exploit the coherence of frequency combs for high spectral efficiency superchannel transmission via effective sharing of a single pilot tone. By phase-locking the receiver comb to the transmitted pilot tone, carrier offsets are suppressed while both the overhead and complexity associated with the pilot tone are reduced. We form a 55 carrier superchannel using a 25-GHz spaced electro-optic frequency comb seeded by a 100-kHz linewidth laser. At a pilot tone overhead of $ 2%, the reduction in carrier offsets is shown to facilitate blind DSP-based carrier recovery of all 54 $\times$ 24 Gbaud PM-128QAM data channels. The resulting superchannel spectral efficiency is 10.3 bits/s/Hz assuming a 28% overhead for forward error correction. Our results show the potential for optical pilot tones to reduce both overhead and complexity in systems using comb-based superchannels together with high-order modulation formats.

Estimation and Suppression of Dispersion-Induced Phase Noise in W-band Direct-Detection OFDM Radio-Over-Fiber Systems

This study experimentally investigated the impact of dispersion-induced phase noise (DPN) on the transmission performance of a 100-GHz DD OFDM-RoF system. We sought to extend the transmission distance through the reduction of DPN using two digital phase noise suppression (PNS) schemes, based on the assumption that all subcarriers suffer from common DPN. The decision-aided PNS (DA-PNS) scheme treats the OFDM signal as feedback to aid in the calculation of DPN without incurring additional overhead. Pilot-aided PNS (PA-PNS) estimates the common DPN by inserting an additional optical pilot tone with guard band. Although both schemes are able to extend fiber transmission distance to beyond 150 km, the PA-PNS scheme tends to be outperformed by the DA-PNS scheme due to additional power required for the pilot tone. Nonetheless, in the DA-PNS scheme, the bandwidth of the estimated DPN must be truncated to avoid error propagation, which can result in the relatively faster increment in the transmission penalty. In contrast, the PA-PNS scheme maintains the variation in penalty to <1 dB, thereby achieving the performance that is insensitive to transmission distance.

Fiber-optic millimeter-wave uplink system incorporating remotely fed 60-GHz-band optical pilot tone

This paper proposes a fiber-optic millimeter-wave (mm-wave) uplink system incorporating a 60-GHz-band photonic downconversion technique. With this concept, neither a light source nor a MM-wave source is required at a base station (BS) since the MM-wave modulated optical pilot tone is fed from a remote central station (CS). In the BS, a high-speed MM-wave electroabsorption modulator and a subsequent optical bandpass filter are used for the photonic downconversion of the received MM-wave signal, converting the 59.6 GHz MM-wave signal into a 2.6 GHz intermediate frequency (IF) signal. The converted signal is then transmitted through the uplink fiber system to the CS with no significant chromatic dispersion effect. We successfully demonstrated not only photonic downconversion, but also 50 km long fiber-optic transmission of the downconverted 2.6 GHz IF signal with 156 Mb/s of data.