Wavelength Division Multiplexing Channel Spacing Research Articles

Wavelength-interleaved MDM-WDM transmission over weakly-coupled FMF

Recently mode-division-multiplexing (MDM) has been widely investigated to enhance fiber optics capacity, in which modes or mode groups in few-mode fiber (FMF) or multi-mode fiber (MMF) are exploited as different spatial channels for data transmission. For short-reach applications, significantly reducing inter-spatial-channel crosstalk to avoid coherent detection and multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) equalization is preferred. Currently most studies focus on the design of weakly-coupled FMFs and mode (de)multiplexers. Alternatively, in this work, a wavelength-interleaved (WI) scheme is proposed to mitigate inter-spatial-channel crosstalk by optimizing the design of direct detection (DD) MDM and wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) system. In weakly-coupled MDM systems, crosstalk mainly comes from the adjacent spatial channels, and the signal-to-crosstalk beat interference (SCBI) constitutes main crosstalk impairment after square-law detection. The WI scheme interleaves the WDM grids in adjacent spatial channels by half WDM channel spacing and uses an electrical low-pass filtering (ELPF) to remove out-of-band SCBI. The effectiveness of SCBI suppression is theoretically analyzed. The feasibility of WI scheme is experimentally verified by 3-mode 3-wavelength MDM-WDM transmission over 500-m OM3 MMF. Enabled by WI scheme, record 120-km 10G-per-channel MDM-WDM transmission over 2-mode FMF without MIMO equalization is successfully demonstrated. The WI scheme is promising to enhance the performance of short reach or even metro MDM optics.

Wavelength-assignable 1310/1550 nm wavelength conversion using completely phase-matched two-pump four-wave mixing in a silicon waveguide

A wavelength converter between 1310 and 1550nm bands is presented based on two-pump four-wave mixing (FWM) in a silicon waveguide. The principle of the inter-band wavelength conversion is analyzed. For an arbitrary incident signal, the converted idler wavelength can be freely assigned by suitably setting the two pump wavelengths to completely satisfy the phase-matching condition. Simulation results show that the signal can be flexibly converted between 1310 and 1550 bands. The conversion efficiencies for the signals with different wavelengths are very stable because the FWM phase-matching condition is completely met. Using this two-pump FWM configuration, channel-selective function can also be realized for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) signals by engineering the dispersion profile of the silicon waveguide according to the WDM channel spacing.

Performance Comparison of Single-Sideband Direct Detection Nyquist-Subcarrier Modulation and OFDM

Direct detection transceivers offer advantages, including low cost and complexity, in short- and medium-haul links. We carried out studies seeking to identify the signal formats which offer the highest information spectral densities and maximum transmission distances for direct detection links. The performance of two spectrally efficient optical signal formats, single-sideband (SSB) Nyquist pulse-shaped subcarrier modulation (SCM) and SSB orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), are compared by means of simulations. The comparison is performed for a range of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) net information spectral densities up to 2.0 b/s/Hz by varying the signal bandwidth, modulation cardinality, and WDM channel spacing. The signal formats' tolerance to signal-signal beating interference, resulting from square-law detection, is investigated, and the Nyquist-SCM format is found to suffer lower penalties from this nonlinearity at high information spectral densities. In 7 × 28 Gb/s WDM transmission at 2.0 b/s/Hz (with electronic predistortion and EDFA-only amplification), Nyquist-SCM signals can be transmitted over distances of up to 720 km of standard SMF in comparison to a maximum of 320 km with the OFDM signal format.

NG-PON2 Technology and Standards

This paper provides a tutorial overview of the latest generation of passive optical network (PON) technology standards nearing completion in ITU-T. The system is termed NG-PON2 and offers a fiber capacity of 40 Gbit/s by exploiting multiple wavelengths at dense wavelength division multiplexing channel spacing and tunable transceiver technology in the subscriber terminals (ONUs). Here, the focus is on the requirements from network operators that are driving the standards developments and the technology selection prior to standardization. A prestandard view of the main physical layer optical specifications is also given, ahead of final ITU-T approval.

System-Level Modeling and Analysis of Thermal Effects in WDM-Based Optical Networks-on-Chip

Multiprocessor systems-on-chip show a trend toward integration of tens and hundreds of processor cores on a single chip. With the development of silicon photonics for short-haul optical communication, wavelength division multiplexing (WDM)-based optical networks-on-chip (ONoCs) are emerging on-chip communication architectures that can potentially offer high bandwidth and power efficiency. Thermal sensitivity of photonic devices is one of the main concerns about the on-chip optical interconnects. We systematically modeled thermal effects in optical links in WDM-based ONoCs. Based on the proposed thermal models, we developed OTemp, an optical thermal effect modeling platform for optical links in both WDM-based ONoCs and single-wavelength ONoCs. OTemp can be used to simulate the power consumption as well as optical power loss for optical links under temperature variations. We use case studies to quantitatively analyze the worst-case power consumption for one wavelength in an eight-wavelength WDM-based optical link under different configurations of low-temperature-dependence techniques. Results show that the worst-case power consumption increases dramatically with on-chip temperature variations. Thermal-based adjustment and optimal device settings can help reduce power consumption under temperature variations. Assume that off-chip vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers are used as the laser source with WDM channel spacing of 1 nm, if we use thermal-based adjustment with guard rings for channel remapping, the worst-case total power consumption is 6.7 pJ/bit under the maximum temperature variation of 60 °C; larger channel spacing would result in a larger worst-case power consumption in this case. If we use thermal-based adjustment without channel remapping, the worst-case total power consumption is around 9.8 pJ/bit under the maximum temperature variation of 60 °C; in this case, the worst-case power consumption would benefit from a larger channel spacing.

Microwave phase shifter with 25-GHz dense wavelength division multiplexing channel spacing tuning using multimode interferometer-coupled microring resonator

The microwave phase shifter using 25-GHz dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) channel spacing tuning on the silicon-on-insulator microring resonator (MRR), which was utilizing the multimode interference as the coupling function to achieve wavelength independence, is proposed and demonstrated. With a quality factor of 1199 for the MRR, there was 25-deg phase tuning for every 25-GHz DWDM channel spacing at 5-GHz microwave frequency. The total tunability from the microwave phase shifter could achieve 350 deg using 22 DWDM channels with 25-GHz spacing.

Semiconductor optical amplifier based multi-wavelength lasers in 0.4 nm channel spacing

We propose a multi-wavelength fiber laser employing a double-pass Mach–Zehnder interferometer filter, a piece of polarization maintaining fiber, a semiconductor optical amplifier and an optical isolator. The proposed fiber laser has the advantages of stable multi-wavelength lasing with 33 channels in standard wavelength division multiplexing channel spacing of 0.4 nm using 15 m polarization maintaining fiber. Power ripple among channels could be reduced by increasing the bias current of the semiconductor optical amplifier.

Optimizing the FEC Overhead in a 100 GbE PDM-QPSK Digital Coherent Transmission System

The finite electrical bandwidth of digital coherent transceivers together with limited wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) channel spacing constrains the maximum forward error correction (FEC) overhead that can be advantageously applied to fiber optic transmission systems. We investigate through simulations of a 100 GbE system employing coherent polarization division multiplexed quaternary phase shift keying, the impact of these bandwidth constraints on the optimal code rate thereby minimizing the required optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) at the receiver. The optimum FEC overhead is found to increase linearly with available bandwidth and the required OSNR is found to reduce for lower order transponder filters. Fabrication of transmitters with a broader spectral response than their receiver counterpart is found to be advantageous. The optimum electrical bandwidth is found to be approximately half the WDM channel spacing for nonreturn to zero (NRZ) transmission and slightly less for return to zero (RZ). There is shown to be no performance advantage in using RZ over NRZ modulation formats when the optimum FEC overhead and filter bandwidth is employed in each case. Nonlinear simulations demonstrate that transpacific transmission is attainable with a margin that increases as the spectral efficiency is relaxed.

Highly Spectrally Efficient DWDM Transmission at 7.0 b/s/Hz Using 8$\,\times\,$65.1-Gb/s Coherent PDM-OFDM

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> In this paper, we discuss the realization of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transmission at high spectral efficiency. For this experiment, coherent polarization-division multiplexing--orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (PDM-OFDM) is used as a modulation format. PDM-OFDM uses training symbols for channel estimation. This makes OFDM easily scalable to higher level modulation formats as channel estimation is realized with training symbols that are independent of the constellation size. Furthermore, because of its well-defined spectrum OFDM requires only a small guard band between WDM channels. The dependence of the number of OFDM subcarriers is investigated with respect to the interchannel linear crosstalk. At a constant data rate the number of OFDM subcarriers is estimated to achieve lower linear crosstalk in order to achieve higher spectral efficiency. We then experimentally demonstrate dense WDM (DWDM) transmission with 7.0-b/s/Hz net spectral efficiency using 8<formula formulatype="inline"> <tex Notation="TeX">$\,\times\,$</tex></formula>65.1-Gb/s coherent PDM-OFDM signals with 8-GHz WDM channel spacing utilizing 32-quadrature-amplitude-modulation subcarrier modulation. Successful transmission is achieved over 240 km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) spans with hybrid erbium-doped fiber amplifiers/Raman amplification. </para>

Performance Limitations of Subcarrier Multiplexed WDM Signal Transmissions Using QAM Modulation

We theoretically investigate the performance limitations of subcarrier multiplexed (SCM) wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) systems using optical double-sideband (DSB) modulated, 16-quadrature amplitude-modulated (QAM) signals. The performance limitations are investigated using crosstalk power and SCM channel spacing for various transmission conditions, including impairment factors such as dispersion and fiber nonlinearities for a single wavelength channel first. The effects of WDM channel spacing on SCM systems with multiwavelength channels are also evaluated via the calculated bit error rate (BER) performance, based on the performance limitations found in the single-wavelength simulation. This enables us to provide guidelines for the design of SCM/WDM systems for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network in WDM-passive optical network (PON) architecture, based on the performance limitations.

Digital Coherent Receiver for Phase-Modulated Radio-Over-Fiber Optical Links

A novel digital signal processing-based coherent receiver for phase-modulated radio-over-fiber (RoF) optical links is presented and demonstrated experimentally. Error-free demodulation of 50-Mbaud binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) and quadrature phase-shift keying data signal modulated on a 5-GHz radio-frequency (RF) carrier is experimentally demonstrated using the proposed digital coherent receiver. Additionally, a wavelength- division-multiplexing (WDM) phase-modulated RoF optical link is experimentally demonstrated. A 3times50 Mb/s WDM transmission of a BPSK modulated 5-GHz RF carrier is achieved over 25 km for the WDM channel spacing of 12.5 and 25 GHz, respectively.

Uncooled DBR laser directly Modulated at 3.125 gb/s as athermal transmitter for low-cost WDM systems

An uncooled three-section tunable distributed Bragg reflector laser is demonstrated as an athermal transmitter for low-cost uncooled wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) systems with tight channel spacing. A /spl plusmn/0.02-nm thermal wavelength drift is achieved under continuous-wave operation up to 70/spl deg/C. Dynamic sidemode suppression ratio of greater than 35 dB is consistently obtained under 3.125-Gb/s direct modulation over a 20/spl deg/C-70/spl deg/C temperature range, with wavelength variation of as low as /spl plusmn/0.2 nm. This indicates that more than an order of magnitude reduction in coarse WDM channel spacing is possible using this source.

Analyses of spectral efficiency and nonlinear tolerance of DPSK formats in 160-Gb/s Raman amplified systems

Five-channel 160-Gb/s wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) systems using ABA dispersion map and Raman amplification are investigated numerically. Transmission distance and system margin are evaluated for return-to-zero differential phase-shift keying (RZ-DPSK) and carrier-suppressed return-to-zero (CSRZ)-DPSK formats. The results show that RZ-DPSK can offer 2300-km system reach at large WDM channel spacing, while CSRZ-DPSK is more robust against nonlinear effects in the fibers and offers a reach of 1900 km at a spectral efficiency of 0.53 b/s/Hz. CSRZ-DPSK can also provide twice the dispersion tolerance of RZ-DPSK and larger spectral efficiency.

Wavelength-band generation and transmission of 324-Tbit/s (81-channel WDM×40-Gbit/s) carrier-suppressed return-to-zero format by use of a single supercontinuum source for frequency standardization

A wavelength band of 40-Gbit/s–based 81-channel dense-wavelength–division multiplexing of a carrier-suppressed (CS) return-to-zero (RZ), i.e., CS-RZ format is simultaneously generated by use of a single supercontinuum (SC) source pumped by an optically multiplexed 40-Gbit/s CS-RZ signal. Because the SC is generated while coherent characteristics are maintained, CS multiplexing in each wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) channel is multiplied. Furthermore, because a single mode-locked laser-diode (MLLD) pulse is an originated signal source, the WDM channel spacing is strongly locked by the microwave mode-locking frequency. As a result, the proposed technique would be favorably applicable to cost-effective multichannel frequency standardization when the center wavelength of the MLLD is locked to an ITU grid. Transmission of 3.24-Tbit/s (81-channel×40-Gbit/s) DWDM in the CS-RZ format with a 66-nm continuous signal band in the C and the L wavelengths is experimentally demonstrated by use of tellurite-based erubium-doped fiber amplifiers.