Distributed abstraction and verification of an installed optical fibre network.

The management of wavelength routed optical mesh networks is complex with many potential light path routes and numerous physical layer impairments to transmission performance. This complexity can be reduced by applying the ideas of abstraction from computer science where different equipment is described in the same basic terms. The noise-to-signal ratio can be used as a metric to describe the quality of transmission performance of a signal propagated through a network element and accumulates additively through a sequence of such elements allowing the estimation of end-to-end performance. This study aims to explore the robustness of the noise-to-signal ratio metric in an installed fibre infrastructure. We show that the abstracted noise-to-signal ratio is independent of the observers and their location. We confirm that the abstracted noise-to-signal ratio can reasonably predict the performance of light-paths subsequently set in our network. Having a robust network element abstraction that can be incorporated into routeing engines allows the network management controller to make decisions on the most effective way to use the network resources in terms of the routeing and data coding format.

Bidirectional wavelength-division multiplexing transmission over installed fibre using a simplified optical coherent access transceiver.

High-speed broadband services require optical fibres in access networks, in which multiple subscribers are connected to service providers, to satisfy the continuously growing bandwidth demand. The primitive signaling scheme used in access networks enables the use of low-cost equipment but diminishes the bandwidth available to end-users. Thus, current technology will be unable to support future broadband demands. Coherent communication systems offer significantly improved power- and bandwidth-efficiency, but require fundamental simplifications to become economically viable for access networks. Here, we demonstrate a promising simplified coherent receiver exhibiting a robust performance against polarisation fluctuations over an installed fibre network. It enables the realisation of high-order modulation formats and offers high sensitivities, achieving a four-fold increase in the supported number of subscribers and approximately doubling the transmission distance compared to the recently standardized access technology. The proposed solution indicates that digital coherent technology can be feasible and transform the access networks, enabling ubiquitous new services and applications with uncontended, multi-gigabits/user broadband connections.

Boundary effects in finite size plasmonic crystals: focusing and routing of plasmonic beams for optical communications.

Plasmonic crystals, which consist of periodic arrangements of surface features at a metal-dielectric interface, allow the manipulation of optical information in the form of surface plasmon polaritons. Here we investigate the excitation and propagation of plasmonic beams in and around finite size plasmonic crystals at telecom wavelengths, highlighting the effects of the crystal boundary shape and illumination conditions. Significant differences in broad plasmonic beam generation by crystals of different shapes are demonstrated, while for narrow beams, the propagation from a crystal onto the smooth metal film is less sensitive to the crystal boundary shape. We show that by controlling the boundary shape, the size and the excitation beam parameters, directional control of propagating plasmonic modes and their behaviour such as angular beam splitting, focusing power and beam width can be efficiently achieved. This provides a promising route for robust and alignment-independent integration of plasmonic crystals with optical communication components.

Nyquist-shaped dispersion-precompensated subcarrier modulation with direct detection for spectrally-efficient WDM transmission.

The use of single-sideband subcarrier modulation (SCM) with Nyquist (N) pulse shaping for cost-effective spectrally-efficient wavelength division multiplexed transmission with direct detection is described. Transmission of digitally pre-compensated 7 × 11 GHz-spaced QPSK SCM channels at 14 Gb/s per channel is experimentally demonstrated over distances of up to 800 km of uncompensated standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) (13440 ps/nm chromatic dispersion).

Experimental demonstration of 30 Gb/s direct-detection optical OFDM transmission with blind symbol synchronisation using virtual subcarriers.

The paper investigates the performance of a blind symbol synchronisation technique for optical OFDM systems based on virtual subcarriers. The test-bed includes a real-time 16-QAM OFDM transmitter operating at a net data rate of 30.65 Gb/s using a single OFDM band with a single FPGA-DAC subsystem and demonstrates transmission over 23.3 km SSMF with direct detection at a BER of 10(-3). By comparing the performance of the proposed synchronisation scheme with that of the Schmidl and Cox algorithm, it was found that the two approaches achieve similar performance for large numbers of averaging symbols, but the performance of the proposed scheme degrades as the number of averaging symbols is reduced. The proposed technique has lower complexity and bandwidth overhead as it does not rely on training sequences. Consequently, it is suitable for implementation in high speed optical OFDM transceivers.

Transportable cavity-stabilized laser system for optical carrier frequency transmission experiments.

We report the design and performance of a transportable laser system at 1543 nm, together with its application as the source for a demonstration of optical carrier frequency transmission over 118 km of an installed dark fiber network. The laser system is based around an optical reference cavity featuring an elastic mounting that bonds the cavity to its support, enabling the cavity to be transported without additional clamping. The cavity exhibits passive fractional frequency insensitivity to vibration along the optical axis of 2.0×10(-11) m(-1) s(2). With active fiber noise cancellation, the optical carrier frequency transmission achieves a fractional frequency instability, measured at the user end, of 2.6×10(-16) at 1 s, averaging down to below 3×10(-18) after 20,000 s. The fractional frequency accuracy of the transfer is better than 3×10(-18). This level of performance is sufficient for comparison of state-of-the-art optical frequency standards and is achieved in an urban fiber environment.

Real-time OFDM or Nyquist pulse generation--which performs better with limited resources?

We investigate the performance and DSP resource requirements of digitally generated OFDM and sinc-shaped Nyquist pulses. The two multiplexing techniques are of interest as they offer highest spectral efficiency. The comparison aims at determining which technology performs better with limited processing capacities of state-of-the-art FPGAs. It is shown that a novel Nyquist pulse shaping technique, based on look-up tables requires lower resource count than equivalent IFFT-based OFDM signal generation while achieving similar performance with low inter-channel guard-bands in ultra-dense WDM. Our findings are based on a resource assessment of selected DSP implementations in terms of both simulations and experimental validations. The experiments were performed with real-time software-defined transmitters using a single or three optical carriers.

Generation and transmission of 85.4 Gb/s real-time 16QAM coherent optical OFDM signals over 400 km SSMF with preamble-less reception.

This paper presents a real-time, coherent optical OFDM transmitter based on a field programmable gate array implementation. The transmitter uses 16QAM mapping and runs at 28 GSa/s achieving a data rate of 85.4 Gb/s on a single polarization. A cyclic prefix of 25% of the symbol duration is added enabling dispersion-tolerant transmission over up to 400 km of SSMF. This is the first transmission experiment performed with a real-time OFDM transmitter running at data rates higher than 40 Gb/s. A key aspect of the paper is the introduction of a novel method for OFDM symbol synchronization without relying on training symbols. Unlike conventional preamble-based synchronization methods which perform cross-correlations at regular time intervals and let the system run freely in between, the proposed method performs synchronization in a continuous manner ensuring correct symbol alignment at all times.

Long-haul 10 Gbit/s linear and non-linear IMDD transmission over uncompensated standard fiber using a SQRT-metric MLSE receiver.

We experimentally demonstrated Intensity-Modulated Direct-Detection (IMDD) single-channel 1,040 km linear transmission and 800 km non-linear transmission at 10 Gb/s over standard single-mode (G.652) fiber, without any optical dispersion compensation or mitigation, using a Maximum-Likelihood Sequence-Estimation (MLSE) receiver employing the square-root (SQRT) branch metric with off-line processing. These experiments were designed as to probe the limits of the MLSE approach. They successfully showed that long-haul uncompensated transmission is in principle possible with MLSE, even in the presence of large uncompensated dispersion and strong intra-channel fiber non-linearities, provided that enough complexity can be built into the receiver. In the linear 1,040 km experiment, a Bit Error Rate (BER) of 10(-3) was achieved with an Optical Signal-to-Noise Ratio (OSNR) penalty with respect to back-to-back of 2.9 dB, using two samples per bit and 16,384 trellis states. Several other set-ups were tested as well, including the use of only one sample per bit and fewer trellis states. In the non-linear 800 km experiment, power was ramped up to 12 dBm, exciting substantial Kerr non-linearity, whose induced spectral-broadening exacerbated the effects of the large uncompensated dispersion of the link. Using an MLSE receiver with 1,024 states, we demonstrated a non-linear threshold of 9 dBm. We benchmarked this experiment towards simulations addressing various electrical and optical dispersion compensation strategies. We also carried out an analysis of error run-lengths, on both experiments, which showed that error burstiness may change considerably depending on the number of processor states, OSNR and the amount of non-linearity in the link.

Dispersing light with surface plasmon polaritonic crystals.

Spectral dispersion of light on a finite-size surface plasmon polaritonic (SPP) crystal has been studied. The angular wavelength separation of one or more orders of magnitude higher than in other state-of-the-art wavelength-splitting devices available to date has been demonstrated. The two-stage process is responsible for the dispersion value, which involves conversion of the incident light into SPP Bloch modes of a nanostructure followed by the SPP Bloch waves refraction at the SPP crystal boundary. The high spectral dispersion achievable in plasmonic devices may be useful for integrated high-resolution spectroscopy in nanophotonic, optical communication and lab-on-a-chip applications.

Optimized superstationary anastigmatic mounts of concave gratings.

Two subfamilies of concave grating superstationary anastigmatic mounts that provide minimum chromatic aberrations are described. The obtained approximate formulas can be used to design flat-field spectrographs and multi/demultiplexers for optical communication networks. Two specific mounts and their performance are presented.

Stationary anastigmatic mounts of concave gratings.

The general equations for parameters of concave grating mounts that provide stationary and superstationary astigmatism at the wavelength of correction are derived for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. These can be used to design grating multi/demultiplexers for wavelength-division multiplexed optical communication systems and high-resolution, narrow-band spectrographs. Important special cases of stationary anastigmatic mounts and their performance are presented.

Concave grating and convex mirror double dispersion spectrograph for optical network applications.

The concave grating stationary anastigmatic spectrograph has been modified into a novel retroreflective scheme by introducing a convex mirror concentric to the intermediate image. This provides double dispersion, diffraction-limited imaging of a long entrance slit, and substantial compensation of the stationary chromatic astigmatism. One can realize 140 independent multi/demultiplexers with 160 channels each simultaneously in the described device for optical network applications. Ray-tracing spot diagrams are presented.

Optimization of Rowland circle mounts for grating demultiplexers and narrow-band spectrographs.

A simple equation for the parameters of the Rowland circle grating mount is derived that ensures that the astigmatism and the meridional spherical aberration are stationary at the wavelength of correction. This is important in optimizing the design of grating multiplexers-demultiplexers and cross connects in wavelengthdivision multiplexed networks and high-resolution narrow-band spectrographs. An analysis of aberrations in three-dimensional and planar two-dimensional optical schemes is presented, and it is shown that in the wavelength range of 1530-1570 nm diffraction-limited performance can be achieved for 160 channels in a three-dimensional multiplexer-demultiplexer and for more than 800 channels for a planar free-space scheme.

Evaluation of performance parameters of single-mode all-fiber Brillouin ring lasers.

An analytical theory of the operation of all-fiber Brillouin ring lasers that accounts for pump depletion is presented. Expressions for stimulated Brillouin scattering lasing threshold power, output Stokes power, and conversion efficiency are derived. It is shown that the fiber cavity detunes from its resonant value owing to the buildup of the counterpropagating Stokes wave, which can be a limitation in the performance of all-fiber resonator systems. The application of the theory is in the design and optimization of performance parameters of devices using all-fiber ring resonators, particularly Brillouin lasers and gyroscopes.

Continuous method for measuring the electro-optic coefficient in Bi(12)SiO(20) and Bi(12)GeO(20).

A technique for accurate measurement of the linear electro-optic coefficient(s) in crystals that are simultaneously optically active and birefringent is described. It is shown that this technique provides a direct method of measuring field-induced birefringence and so can form the basis of a Bi(12)SiO(20) (or Bi(12)GeO(20)) sensor arrangement. The high degree of accuracy obtained in the measurements of the linear electro-optic coefficient in Bi(12)SiO(20) and Bi(12)GeO(20) crystals indicates the particular suitability of these materials in electric-field and voltage-sensor systems with a high dynamic range and for possible waveguiding applications.