Millimeter-wave over fiber integrated sensing and communication system using self-coherent OFDM.

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) waveform is highly preferred as a dual-function candidate for integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems. However, the sensitivity to both carrier frequency offset (CFO) and phase noise greatly impedes its applications in millimeter-wave ISAC systems. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a photonic millimeter-wave ISAC system employing the virtual-carrier-aided self-coherent OFDM technique, wherein a digitally-generated local oscillator is transmitted along with the OFDM signal. Then, a compact CFO-immune and phase noise-immune envelope detection method is implemented for down-converting millimeter-wave communication and radar echo signals. In experiments, a V-band ISAC system is successfully implemented with a simplified remote radio unit, using the remote photonic millimeter-wave heterodyning up-conversion for downlink and the envelope detection-assisted down-conversion for uplink (or radar echoes). In the converged transmission link with a 5-km fiber link and 2-m space link, the Kramers-Kronig (KK) receiver supports a communication data rate up to 16-Gbit/s by mitigating signal-signal beat interference (SSBI). More significantly, the SSBI leads to negligible effects on the sensing performance when classic matched filtering is adopted for target identification. Consequently, a 4.8-cm range resolution and a 4-mm range accuracy are obtained for the radar sensing function.

Total net-rate of 27.88 Tb/s full C-band transmission over 4,550†km using 150†km span length and high-gain EDFA amplification.

We experimentally demonstrate a total net-rate of 27.88 Tb/s for C-band wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transmission over an ultralong span-length of 150 km. It is the largest net capacity × span-length product of 4182 Tb/s·km for C-band, single-core, standard single-mode optical fiber transmission over a length of more than 3,000 km. A total of 99 channels, spaced at 50 GHz intervals, are employed for transmitting 32 GBaud probabilistically constellation-shaped (PCS) 64QAM signals with an information entropy of 5.5. High gain amplifiers can achieve wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transmission with a bandwidth of 6.25 THz, at a noise figure below 4.3 dB, without the assistance of distributed Raman amplification.

Multi-channel broadband optical chaos generation assisted by phase modulation and CFBG feedback.

In this paper, we propose a novel and simple multi-channel broadband optical chaos generation scheme based on phase modulation and chirped fiber Bragg grating (CFBG). Firstly, phase modulation is introduced to generate more new frequency components to broaden the spectrum of the phase chaos. Meanwhile, the accumulated dispersion from CFBG distorts the intensity chaos, converts phase chaos to intensity chaos, and weakens the laser relaxation oscillation. This process would lead to energy redistribution in the power spectrum, effectively increasing the chaotic bandwidth. Then, the wavelength detuning between CFBG and the semiconductor laser is introduced to enhance the chaotic bandwidth further. The experiment results show that the 10 dB bandwidths of the five channels are up to 31.0 GHz, 34.3 GHz, 36.3 GHz, 40 GHz, and 40 GHz, respectively. Note that the maximum bandwidth of the PD in our experiment is limited to 40 GHz. In addition, the multi-channel chaotic signals obtained from the experiment system are used to generate multi-channel physical random numbers. After the post-processing operations, the total rate of five parallel high-speed physical random number generation channels is 4.64 Tbit/s (160 GSa/s × 5bit × 1 channel + 160 GSa/s × 6bit × 4 channels). As far as we know, this is the highest record of using external cavity feedback semiconductor lasers to generate random numbers, which has great potential to meet the security requirements of next-generation Tbit/s optical communication systems.

Regulation of cluster synchronization in multilayer networks of delay coupled semiconductor lasers with the use of disjoint layer symmetry.

In real-world complex systems, heterogeneous components often interact in complex connection patterns and could be schematized by a formalism of multilayer network. In this work, the synchronization characteristics of multilayer network composed of semiconductor lasers (SLs) are investigated systematically. It is demonstrated that the interplay between different layers plays an important role on the synchronization patterns. We elucidate that the performance of cluster synchronization could be facilitated effectively with the introduction of disjoint layer symmetry into network topology. Intertwined stability of clusters from different layers could be decoupled into independent, and the parameter spaces for stable synchronization are extended significantly. The robustness of our proposed regulation scheme on operation parameters is numerically evaluated. Furthermore, the generality of presented theoretical results is validated in networks with more complex topology and multiple layers.

Fast fiber nonlinearity compensation method for PDM coherent optical transmission systems based on the Fourier neural operator.

Fiber nonlinearity compensation (NLC) is likely to become an indispensable component of coherent optical transmission systems for extending the transmission reach and increasing capacity per fiber. In this work, we introduce what we believe to be a novel fast black-box neural network model based on the Fourier neural operator (FNO) to compensate for the chromatic dispersion (CD) and nonlinearity simultaneously. The feasibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated in uniformly distributed as well as probabilistically-shaped 32GBaud 16/32/64-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16/32/64QAM) polarization-division-multiplexed (PDM) coherent optical communication systems. The experimental results demonstrate that about 0.31 dB Q-factor improvement is achieved compared to traditional digital back-propagation (DBP) with 5 steps per span for PDM-16QAM signals after 1600 km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) transmission at the optimal launched power of 4 dBm. While, the time consumption is reduced from 6.04 seconds to 1.69 seconds using a central processing unit (CPU), and from 1.54 seconds to only 0.03 seconds using a graphic processing unit (GPU), respectively. This scheme also reveals noticeable generalization ability in terms of launched power and modulation format.

Compact optical 90° hybrid based on a wedge-shaped 2 × 4 MMI coupler and a 2 × 2 MMI coupler on a thin-film lithium niobate platform.

We performed an experimental demonstration of a wedge-shaped optical 90° hybrid coupler on the thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) platform, utilizing a paired-interference-based 2 × 4 multimode interference (MMI) coupler and a general-interference-based 2 × 2 MMI coupler. The fabricated optical 90° hybrid coupler has a compact footprint with a width of 18 µm and a length of 134 µm. In a coherent receiving system, the hybrid coupler directly connects to the balanced photodiode array, eliminating the need for waveguide crossings or cascaded phase shifters. The device exhibits a < 1.1 dB excess loss, a > 20 dB common-mode rejection ratio (CMRR), a < 1.3 dB wavelength sensitive loss, and a < ±5° phase deviation over a spectral range of 1530-1560 nm, which is promising to enable a compact heterogeneously integrated coherent receiving system on the thin-film lithium niobate platform.

Real-time adaptive optical self-interference cancellation for in-band full-duplex transmission using SARSA(λ) reinforcement learning.

Self-interference (SI) due to signal leakage from a local transmitter is an issue in an in-band full-duplex (IBFD) transmission system, which would cause severe distortions to a receiving signal of interest (SOI). By superimposing a local reference signal with the same amplitude and opposite phase, the SI signal can be fully canceled. However, as the manipulation of the reference signal is usually operated manually, it is difficult to ensure a high speed and high accurate cancellation. To overcome this problem, a real-time adaptive optical SI cancellation (RTA-OSIC) scheme using a SARSA(λ) reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The proposed RTA-OSIC scheme can automatically adjust the amplitude and phase of a reference signal by adjusting a variable optical attenuator (VOA) and a variable optical delay line (VODL) achieved through an adaptive feedback signal, which is generated by evaluating the quality of the received SOI. To verify the feasibility of the proposed scheme, a 5 GHz 16QAM OFDM IBFD transmission experiment is demonstrated. By using the proposed RTA-OSIC scheme, for an SOI at three different bandwidths of 200, 400, and 800 MHz, the signal can be adaptively and correctly recovered within 8 time periods (TPs), which is the required time of a single adaptive control step. The cancellation depth for the SOI with a bandwidth of 800 MHz is 20.18 dB. The short- and long-term stability of the proposed RTA-OSIC scheme is also evaluated. The experimental results indicate that the proposed approach could be a promising solution for real-time adaptive SI cancellation in future IBFD transmission systems.

Experimental demonstration of 201.6-Gbit/s coherent probabilistic shaping QAM transmission with quantum noise stream cipher over a 1200-km standard single mode fiber.

A probabilistic shaping (PS) quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) based on Y-00 quantum noise stream cipher (QNSC) has been proposed. We experimentally demonstrated this scheme with data rate of 201.6Gbit/s over a 1200-km standard single mode fiber (SSMF) under a 20% SD-FEC threshold. Accounting for the 20% FEC and 6.25% pilot overhead, the achieved net data rate is ∼160Gbit/s. In the proposed scheme, a mathematical cipher (Y-00 protocol) is utilized to convert the original low-order modulation PS-16 (22 × 22) QAM into ultra-dense high-order modulation PS-65536 (28 × 28) QAM. Then, the physical randomness of quantum (shot) noise at photodetection and amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise from optical amplifiers are employed to mask the encrypted ultra-dense high-order signal for further improving the security. We further analyze the security performance by two metrics known in the reported QNSC systems, namely the number of masked signals (NMS) of noise and the detection failure probability (DFP). Experimental results show it is difficult or even impossible to extract transmission signals from quantum or ASE noise for an eavesdropper (Eve). We believe that the proposed PS-QAM/QNSC secure transmission scheme has the potential to be compatible with existing high-speed long-distance optical fiber communication systems.

Numerical and experimental investigation of a dispersive optoelectronic oscillator for chaotic time-delay signature suppression.

Chaos generation from a novel single-loop dispersive optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) with a broadband chirped fiber Bragg grating (CFBG) is numerically and experimentally investigated. The CFBG has much broader bandwidth than the chaotic dynamics such that its dispersion effect rather than filtering effect dominates the reflection. The proposed dispersive OEO exhibits chaotic dynamics when sufficient feedback strength is guaranteed. Suppression of chaotic time-delay signature (TDS) is observed as the feedback strength increases. The TDS can be further suppressed as the amount of grating dispersion increases. Without compromising bandwidth performance, our proposed system extends the parameter space of chaos, enhances the robustness to modulator bias variation, and improves TDS suppression by at least five times comparing to the classical OEO. Experimental results qualitatively agree well with numerical simulations. In addition, the advantage of dispersive OEO is further verified by experimentally demonstrating random bit generation with tunable rate up to 160 Gbps.

Performance improvement of coherent optical chaos communication using probabilistic shaping.

We numerically investigate the effects of probabilistic shaping on the performance improvement of coherent optical chaos communication. Results show that the decryption bit-error ratio (BER) of the 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signal decreases upon increasing the probabilistic shaping factor. It is predicted that the BER of 10-GBd 16QAM can be decreased by one order of magnitude. On the other hand, for the forward error correction threshold of the BER, the requirement for synchronization quality is no longer strict for successful decryption. This means that probabilistic shaping improves the system's tolerance to residual synchronization error. Thus, the transmission rate can be increased by approximately 30∼60%. The side effect of probabilistic shaping is that the valid masking coefficient range is narrowed.

Wideband chaos synchronization using discrete-mode semiconductor lasers.

Optical chaos communication encounters difficulty in high-speed transmission due to the challenge of realizing wideband chaos synchronization. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a wideband chaos synchronization using discrete-mode semiconductor lasers (DMLs) in a master-slave open-loop configuration. The DML can generate wideband chaos with a 10-dB bandwidth of 30 GHz under simple external mirror feedback. By injecting the wideband chaos into a slave DML, an injection-locking chaos synchronization with synchronization coefficient of 0.888 is realized. A parameter range with frequency detuning of -18.75 GHz to approximately 1.25 GHz under strong injection is identified for yielding the wideband synchronization. In addition, we find it more susceptible to achieve the wideband synchronization using the slave DML with lower bias current and smaller relaxation oscillation frequency.

Predicting nonlinear multi-pulse propagation in optical fibers via a lightweight convolutional neural network.

The nonlinear evolution of ultrashort pulses in optical fiber has broad applications, but the computational burden of convolutional numerical solutions necessitates rapid modeling methods. Here, a lightweight convolutional neural network is designed to characterize nonlinear multi-pulse propagation in highly nonlinear fiber. With the proposed network, we achieve the forward mapping of multi-pulse propagation using the initial multi-pulse temporal profile as well as the inverse mapping of the initial multi-pulse based on the propagated multi-pulse with the coexistence of group velocity dispersion and self-phase modulation. A multi-pulse comprising various Gaussian pulses in 4-level pulse amplitude modulation is utilized to simulate the evolution of a complex random multi-pulse and investigate the prediction precision of two tasks. The results obtained from the unlearned testing sets demonstrate excellent generalization and prediction performance, with a maximum absolute error of 0.026 and 0.01 in the forward and inverse mapping, respectively. The approach provides considerable potential for modeling and predicting the evolution of an arbitrary complex multi-pulse.

Long-range high-spatial-resolution distributed Brillouin sensing enabled by correlation-domain encoding.

A hybrid aperiodic-coded Brillouin optical correlation domain analysis (HA-coded BOCDA) fiber sensor is proposed to achieve long-range high-spatial-resolution distributed measurement. It is found that high-speed phase modulation in the BOCDA actually forms a special energy transformation mode. This mode can be exploited to suppress all detrimental effects parasitized in a pulse coding-induced cascaded stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) process and thereby enable the HA-coding to reach its full potential to improve the BOCDA performance. As a result, under a low system complexity and an enhanced measurement speed, a 72.65-km sensing range and a 5-cm spatial resolution are achieved with a temperature/strain measurement accuracy of 2℃/40 µÎµ.

Photonic super-resolution millimeter-wave joint radar-communication system using self-coherent detection.

A millimeter-wave (MMW) joint radar-communication (JRC) system with super-resolution is proposed and experimentally demonstrated, using optical heterodyne upconversion and self-coherent detection downconversion techniques. The point lies in the designed coherent dual-band constant envelope linear frequency modulation-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (LFM-OFDM) signal with opposite phase modulation indexes for the JRC system. Then the self-coherent detection, as a simple and low-cost means, is accordingly facilitated for both de-chirping of MMW radar and frequency downconversion reception of MMW communication, which circumvents costly high-speed mixers along with MMW local oscillators and, more significantly, achieves the real-time decomposition of radar and communication information. Furthermore, a super-resolution radar range profile is realized through the coherent fusion processing of dual-band JRC signals. In experiments, a dual-band LFM-OFDM JRC signal centered at 54 GHz and 61 GHz is generated. The two bands feature an identical instantaneous bandwidth of 2 GHz and carry an OFDM signal of 1 Gbaud, which helps to achieve a 6-Gbit/s data rate for communication and a 1.76-cm range resolution for radar.

Photonic reservoir computing using a self-injection locked semiconductor laser under narrowband optical feedback.

Photonic time-delay reservoir computing (TDRC) using a self-injection locked semiconductor laser under optical feedback from a narrowband apodized fiber Bragg grating (AFBG) is proposed and numerically demonstrated. The narrowband AFBG suppresses the laser's relaxation oscillation and provides self-injection locking in both the weak and strong feedback regimes. By contrast, conventional optical feedback provides locking only in the weak feedback regime. The TDRC based on self-injection locking is first evaluated by the computational ability and memory capacity, then benchmarked by the time series prediction and channel equalization. Good computing performances can be achieved using both the weak and strong feedback regimes. Interestingly, the strong feedback regime broadens the usable feedback strength range and improves robustness to feedback phase variations in the benchmark tests.

Adaptive polarization control for a fiber system based on the optimized AdamSPGD algorithm.

In this work, an adaptive control scheme based on the optimized AdamSPGD algorithm is proposed to maintain the stable state of polarization (SOP) of the optical signal in a fiber system. The search space can be reduced by half with the guidance of the physical equation of optical intensity that passes through a liner polarizer, leading to an increase in the speed and stability. Moreover, the robustness is guaranteed by the adoption of AdamSPGD as the optimization object. In the experiment, the input optical signals with random SOPs are successfully controlled to a stable output SOP. Compared to the original algorithm, the speed is increased by 44.73%, and the standard deviation of the required number of iterations is reduced by 21.27%.

SASFF: A Video Synthesis Algorithm for Unstructured Array Cameras Based on Symmetric Auto-Encoding and Scale Feature Fusion.

For the synthesis of ultra-large scene and ultra-high resolution videos, in order to obtain high-quality large-scene videos, high-quality video stitching and fusion are achieved through multi-scale unstructured array cameras. This paper proposes a network model image feature point extraction algorithm based on symmetric auto-encoding and scale feature fusion. By using the principle of symmetric auto-encoding, the hierarchical restoration of image feature location information is incorporated into the corresponding scale feature, along with deep separable convolution image feature extraction, which not only improves the performance of feature point detection but also significantly reduces the computational complexity of the network model. Based on the calculated high-precision feature point pairing information, a new image localization method is proposed based on area ratio and homography matrix scaling, which improves the speed and accuracy of the array camera image scale alignment and positioning, realizes high-definition perception of local details in large scenes, and obtains clearer synthesis effects of large scenes and high-quality stitched images. The experimental results show that the feature point extraction algorithm proposed in this paper has been experimentally compared with four typical algorithms using the HPatches dataset. The performance of feature point detection has been improved by an average of 4.9%, the performance of homography estimation has been improved by an average of 2.5%, the amount of computation has been reduced by 18%, the number of network model parameters has been reduced by 47%, and the synthesis of billion-pixel videos has been achieved, demonstrating practicality and robustness.

Microwave photonic link to transmit four microwave vector signals on a single optical carrier based on coherent detection and digital signal processing.

A microwave photonic link to transmit four independent microwave vector signals modulated on a single optical carrier based on coherent detection and digital signal processing (DSP) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. At the transmitter, a continuous-wave (CW) light wave is modulated by four independent microwave vector signals with an identical center microwave frequency at a dual-polarization dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (DP-DDMZM), to generate four intensity-modulated optical signals, with two signals sharing one of the two orthogonal polarization states. After transmission over a single-mode fiber (SMF), the optical signals are applied to a polarization- and phase- diversity coherent receiver to which a light wave from a second laser source as a local oscillator (LO) is also applied. To eliminate the joint phase noise and the unstable offset frequency from the transmitter and the LO laser sources and to perform polarization demultiplexing, a digital noise cancellation algorithm and a polarization demultiplexing algorithm are developed. The proposed approach is evaluated experimentally. For four independent 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) microwave vector signals at 4 GHz with a symbol rate of 0.5 GSymbol/s, error-free transmission over a 9-km SMF is achieved when the received optical power at the coherent receiver is higher than -21 dBm with forward error correction (FEC).

Strong cluster synchronization in complex semiconductor laser networks with time delay signature suppression.

Cluster synchronization is a state where clusters of nodes inside the network exhibit isochronous synchronization. Here, we present a mechanism to realize the strong cluster synchronization in semiconductor laser (SL) networks with complex topology, where stable cluster synchronization is achieved with decreased correlation between dynamics of different clusters and time delay signature concealment. We elucidate that, with the removal of intra-coupling within clusters, the stability of cluster synchronization could be enhanced effectively, while the statistical correlation among dynamics of each cluster decreases. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the correlation between clusters can be further reduced with the introduction of dual-path injection and frequency detuning. The robustness of strong cluster synchronization on operation parameters is discussed systematically. Time delay signature in chaotic outputs of SL network is concealed simultaneously with heterogeneous inter-coupling among different clusters. Our results suggest a new approach to control the cluster synchronization in complex SL networks and may potentially lead to new network solutions for communication schemes and encryption key distribution.

Overcoming acoustic crosstalk in the BOTDA sensor with a bidirectional frequency-modulated probe.

Conventional Brillouin optical time-domain analyzer (BOTDA) with a frequency-modulated probe (FMP) could avoid non-local effects, while still suffering from the acoustic crosstalk between different frequencies. The induced Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) measurement errors over the whole sensing fiber link reduce system certainty subsequently. A BOTDA scheme with a bidirectional frequency-modulated probe (BFMP) is proposed to overcome such an effect. It utilizes BFMP to generate the crosstalk of the same magnitude and opposite direction to compensate each other. Experimental results indicate that the pulse interval of the coded sequence could be reduced to ∼500 ns to improve the measurement efficiency and BFS estimation errors (∼2.2 MHz) over 117.46-km sensor link are eliminated simultaneously.