Half-spectrum OFDM to quadruple the spectral efficiency of underwater wireless optical communication with digital power division multiplexing.

Improving the spectrum efficiency (SE) is an effective method to further enhance the data rate of bandwidth-limited underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) systems. Non-orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (NOFDM) with a compression factor of 0.5 can save half of the bandwidth without introducing any inter-carrier-interference (ICI) only if the total number of subcarriers is large enough, and we termed it as half-spectrum OFDM (HS-OFDM). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported work on a closed-form HS-OFDM signal in the discrete domain from the perspective of a correlation matrix. Due to the special mathematical property, no extra complex decoding algorithm is required at the HS-OFDM receiver, making it as simple as the conventional OFDM receiver. Compared with traditional OFDM, HS-OFDM can realize the same data rate, but with a larger signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) margin. To fully use the SNR resource of the communication system, we further propose a digital power division multiplexed HS-OFDM (DPDM-HS-OFDM) scheme to quadruple the SE of conventional OFDM for the bandwidth-starved UWOCs. The experimental results show that HS-OFDM can improve the receiver sensitivity by around 4 dB as opposed to conventional 4QAM-OFDM with the same data rate and SE. With the help of the DPDM-HS-OFDM scheme, the data rate of multi-user UWOC can reach up to 4.5 Gbps under the hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) limit of a bit error rate (BER) of 3.8×10-3. Although there is some performance degradation in comparison with single-user HS-OFDM, the BER performance of multi-user DPDM-HS-OFDM is still superior to that of conventional single-user 4QAM-OFDM. Both single-user HS-OFDM and multi-user DPDM-HS-OFDM successfully achieve 2 Gbps/75 m data transmission, indicating that the DPDM-HS-OFDM scheme is of great importance in bandwidth-limited UWOC systems and has guiding significance to underwater wireless optical multiple access.

Genes expression profiles in vascular cambium of Eucalyptus urophylla × Eucalyptus grandis at different ages.

BACKGROUND: Wood is a secondary xylem generated by vascular cambium. Vascular cambium activities mainly include cambium proliferation and vascular tissue formation through secondary growth, thereby producing new secondary phloem inward and secondary xylem outward and leading to continuous tree thickening and wood formation. Wood formation is a complex biological process, which is strictly regulated by multiple genes. Therefore, molecular level research on the vascular cambium of different tree ages can lead to the identification of both key and related genes involved in wood formation and further explain the molecular regulation mechanism of wood formation. RESULTS: In the present study, RNA-Seq and Pac-Bio Iso-Seq were used for profiling gene expression changes in Eucalyptus urophylla × Eucalyptus grandis (E. urograndis) vascular cambium at four different ages. A total of 59,770 non-redundant transcripts and 1892 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified. The expression trends of the DEGs related to cell division and differentiation, cell wall biosynthesis, phytohormone, and transcription factors were analyzed. The DEGs encoding expansin, kinesin, cycline, PAL, GRP9, KNOX, C2C2-dof, REV, etc., were highly expressed in E. urograndis at three years old, leading to positive effects on growth and development. Moreover, some gene family members, such as NAC, MYB, HD-ZIP III, RPK, and RAP, play different regulatory roles in wood formation because of their sophisticated transcriptional network and function redundantly. CONCLUSIONS: These candidate genes are a potential resource to further study wood formation, especially in fast-growing and adaptable eucalyptus. The results may also serve as a basis for further research to unravel the molecular mechanism underlying wood formation.

Broadband polarization/mode insensitive 3-dB optical coupler for silicon photonic switches.

In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a four-mode polarization/mode insensitive 3-dB coupler based on an adiabatic coupler. The proposed design works for the first two transverse electric (TE) modes and the first two transverse magnetic (TM) modes. Over an optical bandwidth of 70 nm (1500 nm to 1570 nm), the coupler exhibits at most 0.7 dB insertion loss with a maximum crosstalk of -15.7 dB and a power imbalance not worse than 0.9 dB. A multimode photonic switch matrix using this optical coupler is proposed simultaneously exploiting wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), polarization division multiplexing (PDM), and mode division multiplexing (MDM). Based on the coupler experimental measurements, the switching system loss is estimated to be 10.6 dB with crosstalk limited by the MDM (de)multiplexing circuit.

Experimental demonstration of real-time optical DFT-S DMT signal transmission for a blue-LED-based UWOC system using spatial diversity reception.

Underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) has broad prospects in underwater real-time applications. We design and experimentally demonstrate a real-time discrete Fourier transform spread discrete multi-tone (DFT-S DMT) signal transmission based on a field programmable gate array for a blue-LED-based UWOC system with a data rate of up to 30 Mbps over a 15-m underwater channel. The architecture and usage of an on-chip resource as well as power consumption are analyzed and discussed. To reduce the impacts of multipath fading and received intensity fluctuation, spatial diversity reception is also introduced. Furthermore, the receiver sensitivity at a specified bit error rate (BER) threshold and the quality of the images are evaluated using three types of Reed-Solomon (RS) codes. At the BER threshold of 10-4, over 2.8-dB receiver sensitivity improvement is obtained by the DFT-S DMT scheme with the RS (64, 56) code as compared to the uncoded one at the data rate of 30 Mbps. The performance of BER, color difference, and structural similarity in the image transmission of DFT-S DMT is superior to that of the conventional hard clipping quadrature amplitude modulation DMT in a high-data-rate region because of the low peak-to-average-power ratio and ability to mitigate high-frequency fading in a band-limited UWOC system. With schemes of the RS code, DFT-S, and diversity reception, error-free transmission of images is achieved over a 15-m water channel. The proposed UWOC system has the advantages of low power consumption and portability, which foresees a bright future in underwater applications over short to moderate distances.

Fabrication error tolerant broadband mode converters and their working principles.

Computational inverse design techniques have shown potential to become reliable means for designing compact nanophotonic devices without compromising the performance. Much effort has been made to reduce the computation cost involved in the optimization process and obtain final designs that are robust to fabrication imperfections. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate TE0-TE1 and TE1-TE3 mode converters (MCs) on the silicon-on-insulator platform designed using the computationally efficient shape optimization method. These MCs have mode conversion efficiencies above 95%, and the insertion loss ranges from 0.3 dB to 1 dB over a wavelength span of 80 nm ranging from 1.5 µm to 1.58 µm. Maximum modal crosstalk found experimentally in the C-band is -19 dB. The conversion efficiency drops at most by 2.2% at 1.55 µm for 10 nm over/under etch, implying good robustness to dimensional variations. We present the mode conversion mechanism of these MCs by studying the simulated electromagnetic field patterns and validate with supportive data. We also demonstrate their performance in the time domain with a 28 Gbps OOK and a 20 GBaud PAM-4 payload transmissions, which supports their utility for high throughput data communications. The open eye diagrams exhibit Q-factors of 8 dB.

Efficient mode exchanger-based silicon photonic switch enabled by inverse design.

A novel and energy efficient mode insensitive switch building block is proposed and experimentally demonstrated on a silicon-on-insulator platform. Based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, the switch uses a relatively compact mode insensitive phase shifter which includes a mode exchanger. The novel structure realizes the exact same phase shift for all modes by exchanging the modes midway within the phase shifter. The design approach leads to reduced power consumption otherwise not possible. Switching the first two quasi transverse electric (TE) modes simultaneously consumes 25.6 mW of power, an approximately 30% reduction from previous reported demonstrations. The measured insertion loss is 3.1 dB on average with a worst-case crosstalk of -14.9 dB over a 40 nm optical bandwidth from 1530 nm to 1570 nm. The design methodology enables scalability up to four optical modes.

100-m/3-Gbps underwater wireless optical transmission using a wideband photomultiplier tube (PMT).

In this paper, a wideband photomultiplier tube (PMT)-based underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) system is proposed and a comprehensive experimental study of the proposed PMT-based UWOC system is conducted, in which the transmission distance, data rate, and attenuation length (AL) is pushed to 100.6 meters, 3 Gbps, and 6.62, respectively. The receiver sensitivity at 100.6-meter underwater transmission is as low as -40 dBm for the 1.5-Gbps on-off keying (OOK) modulation signal. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first Gbps-class UWOC experimental demonstration in >100-meter transmission that has ever been reported. To further minimize the complexity of channel equalization, a sparsity-aware equalizer with orthogonal matching pursuit is adopted to reduce the number of the filter coefficients by more than 50% while keeping slight performance penalty. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed PMT-based UWOC system in different turbidity waters is investigated, which shows the robustness of the proposed scheme. Thanks to the great sensitivity (approaching the quantum limit) and a relatively larger effective area, benefits of misalignment tolerance contributed by the PMT is verified through a proof-of-concept UWOC experiment.

Underwater wireless optical communication utilizing low-complexity sparse pruned-term-based nonlinear decision-feedback equalization.

The nonlinearity of the light-emitting diode (LED) in underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) systems is considered the one major limiting factor that degrades the system's performance. Volterra series-based nonlinear equalization is widely employed to mitigate such nonlinearity in communication systems. However, the conventional Volterra series-based model is of high complexity, especially for the nonlinearity of higher-order terms or longer memory lengths. In this paper, by pruning away some negligible beating terms and adaptively picking out some of the dominant terms while discarding the trivial ones, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a sparse pruned-term-based nonlinear decision-feedback equalization (SPT-NDFE) scheme for the LED-based UWOC system with an inappreciable performance degradation as compared to systems without the pruning strategy. Meanwhile, by replacing the self/cross beating terms with the terms formed by the absolute operation of a sum of two input samples instead of the product operation terms, a sparse pruned-term-based absolute operation nonlinear decision-feedback equalization (SPT-ANDFE) scheme is also introduced to further reduce complexity. The experimental results show that the SPT-NDFE scheme exhibits comparable performance as compared to the conventional NDFE (nonlinear decision-feedback equalization) scheme with lower complexity (the nonlinear coefficients are reduced by 63.63% as compared to the conventional NDFE scheme). While the SPT-ANDFE scheme yields suboptimal performance with further reduced complexity at the expense of a slight performance degradation, the robustness of the proposed schemes in different turbidity waters is experimentally verified. The proposed channel equalization schemes with low complexity and high performance are promising for power/energy-sensitive UWOC systems.

Biological Characteristics of Recombinant Arthrobotrys oligospora Chitinase AO-801.

Chitinase AO-801 is a hydrolase secreted by Arthrobotrys oligospora during nematode feeding, while its role remained elusive. This study analyzed the molecular characteristics of recombinant chitinase of Arthrobotrys oligospora (reAO-801). AO-801 belongs to the typical glycoside hydrolase 18 family with conserved chitinase sequence and tertiary structure of (α/ß)8 triose-phosphate isomerase (TIM) barrel. The molecular weight of reAO-801 was 42 kDa. reAO-801 effectively degraded colloidal and powdered chitin, egg lysate, and stage I larval lysate of Caenorhabditis elegans. The activity of reAO-801 reached its peak at 40˚C and pH values between 4-7. Enzyme activity was inhibited by Zn2+, Ca2+, and Fe3+, whereas Mg2+ and K+ potentiated its activity. In addition, urea, sodium dodecyl sulfate, and 2-mercaptoethanol significantly inhibited enzyme activity. reAO-801 showed complete nematicidal activity against C. elegans stage I larvae. reAO-801 broke down the C. elegans egg shells, causing them to die or die prematurely by hatching the eggs. It also invoked degradation of Haemonchus contortus eggs, resulting in apparent changes in the morphological structure. This study demonstrated the cytotoxic effect of reAO-801, which laid the foundation for further dissecting the mechanism of nematode infestation by A. oligospora.

Molecular Characteristics and Potent Immunomodulatory Activity of Fasciola hepatica Cystatin.

Cystatin, a cysteine protease inhibitor found in many parasites, plays important roles in immune evasion. This study analyzed the molecular characteristics of a cystatin from Fasciola hepatica (FhCystatin) and expressed recombinant FhCystatin (rFhcystatin) to investigate the immune modulatory effects on lipopolysaccharide-induced proliferation, migration, cytokine secretion, nitric oxide (NO) production, and apoptosis in mouse macrophages. The FhCystatin gene encoded 116 amino acids and contained a conserved cystatin-like domain. rFhCystatin significantly inhibited the activity of cathepsin B. rFhCystatin bound to the surface of mouse RAW264.7 cells, significantly inhibited cell proliferation and promoted apoptosis. Moreover, rFhCystatin inhibited the expression of cellular nitric oxide, interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor-α, and promoted the expression of transforming growth factor-ß and interleukin-10. These results showed that FhCystatin played an important role in regulating the activity of mouse macrophages. Our findings provide new insights into mechanisms underlying the immune evasion and contribute to the exploration of potential targets for the development of new drug to control F. hepatica infection.

Dual-mode broadband compact 2 × 2 optical power splitter using sub-wavelength metamaterial structures.

The multimode power splitter is a fundamental component in mode-division multiplexed systems. In this paper, we design and characterize a broadband compact dual-mode multimode interferometer (MMI) optical power splitter based on subwavelength grating (SWG) structures. The optimized dual-mode MMI is three times more compact than its conventional mode insensitive MMIs and shows low loss and low crosstalk flat response over 100 nm bandwidth. Characterizations of the fabricated dual-mode splitter show that the total excess loss in the experiment is less than 0.1 dB and 0.65 dB for TE0 and TE1, respectively, and the modal crosstalk is less than -17 dB for both input modes.

Topological inverse design of nanophotonic devices with energy constraint.

In this paper, we introduce an energy constraint to improve topology-based inverse design. Current methods typically place the constraints solely on the device geometry and require many optimization iterations to converge to a manufacturable solution. In our approach the energy constraint directs the optimization process to solutions that best contain the optical field inside the waveguide core medium, leading to more robust designs with relatively larger minimum feature size. To validate our method, we optimize two components: a mode converter (MC) and a wavelength demultiplexer. In the MC, the energy constraint leads to nearly binarized structures without applying independent binarization stage. In the demultiplexer, it also reduces the appearance of small features. Furthermore, the proposed constraint improves the robustness to fabrication imperfections as shown in demultiplexer design. With energy constraint optimization, the corresponding spectrum shifts under ±10 nm dimensional variations are reduced by 17% to 30%. The proposed constraint is unique in simultaneously taking both geometry and electric field into account, opening the door to new ideas and insights to further improve the computationally intensive topology-based optimization process of nanophotonic devices.

Experimental demonstration of 50-m/5-Gbps underwater optical wireless communication with low-complexity chaotic encryption.

In this paper, a low-complexity two-level chaotic encryption scheme is introduced and experimentally demonstrated to improve the physical layer security of a 450-nm laser underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) system using discrete Fourier transform spread discrete multi-tone (DFT-S DMT) modulation. In the first encryption stage, the original bit stream is encrypted with a chaotic sequence based on a one-dimensional Logistic map. In the second encryption stage, the real and imaginary components of the DFT-S symbols are further encrypted with a pair of separate chaotic sequences, which are generated from a two-dimensional Logistic iterative chaotic map with infinite collapse (2D-LICM). The experimental results indicate that the encryption operation has no negative effect on the performance of the proposed UOWC system. For chaotic encryption, the DFT-S DMT gives a better performance than the DMT scheme under different water turbidities. 55-m/4.5-Gbps and 50-m/5-Gbps underwater transmissions are successfully demonstrated by the chaotic encrypted DFT-S DMT scheme. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to verify the feasibility of chaotic encryption in a high-speed UOWC system.

Mode insensitive switch for on-chip interconnect mode division multiplexing systems.

A mode insensitive switch is proposed and experimentally demonstrated on a silicon-on-insulator platform using a balanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer structure with a mode insensitive phase shifter for on-chip mode division multiplexing interconnects. Switching the first three quasi-transverse electric (TE) modes, consuming less than 40 mW power is demonstrated. The whole system exhibits approximately $ - {2},\;{ - 3.7}$-2,-3.7, and $ - {5.2}\;{\rm dB}$-5.2dB insertion loss for the TE0, TE1, and TE2 modes at 1550 nm, respectively. The corresponding crosstalk is less than $ - {8.6}\;({\rm - 9}), {- 8} ({ - 10.3})$-8.6(-9),-8(-10.3), and $ - {10}\;{\rm dB}$-10dB ($ - {10.3}\;{\rm dB}$-10.3dB) within the wavelength range of 40 nm (1535-1575 nm) for the cross (bar) states, respectively. The extinction ratios (ERs) for the cross (bar) states are 20.1 (19.5), 22.8 (33.7), and 15.4 dB (18.1 dB) for the TE0, TE1, and TE2 modes at 1550 nm, respectively. The payload transmission is also conducted using non-return-to-zero pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS)-31 data signals at 10 Gb/s for single-mode transmission and simultaneous three-mode transmissions. For all the scenarios, open eyes are observed.

Modal crosstalk in Silicon photonic multimode interconnects.

We investigate modal crosstalk in silicon photonic MDM-based interconnects using tapered multiplexers. Crosstalk from coherent optical interference originates from variation in the physical structure and alters the transmission link performance. Through simulations and experimental work, optical crosstalk as a function of wavelength is analyzed to understand its impact in MDM and MDM-WDM dual-multiplexing applications. The detrimental effects are validated in the frequency and time domains through fabricated MDM interconnects of various lengths. Results indicate modal crosstalk must be < -22 dB to maintain a BER of 10-12. The experimental methodology assesses the optical modal crosstalk's impact on the data, towards a mitigation approach to improve the payload signal integrity and enable system-level optimization such as channel wavelength allocation.

3×10 Gb/s silicon three-mode switch with 120° hybrid based unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a reconfigurable mode division multiplexing (MDM) silicon photonics three-mode switch (3MS) in C-band using a 120° optical hybrid based unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer (UMZI) and Ti/W metal heater phase-shifter. The novel 3MS enables reconfigurable switching of the first three transverse electric (TE) modes by exploiting the relative phase difference of the 120° hybrid. A proof-of-concept realization of this 3MS demonstrates <12.0 µs switching time and >12.3 dB switching extinction ratio at 1560 nm wavelength with 94.8 mW average heater power consumption. Simultaneous (de)multiplexing and switching of 10 Gb/s non-return-to-zero (NRZ) PRBS31 optical payload over three spatial channels experimentally demonstrates 3 ×10 Gb/s aggregated bandwidth. Open eye diagrams in all output channels with >9.6 electrical signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) exhibits reliable data transmission. The 3MS has potential applications in MDM silicon photonics interconnects for the implementation of high throughput switch matrix.

Discrete multitone transmission for underwater optical wireless communication system using probabilistic constellation shaping to approach channel capacity limit.

Probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) is utilized to approach the channel capacity limit in discrete multitone (DMT) transmission for underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) system. A fixed quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) format with various probabilistic distributions is individually allocated for different subcarriers to obtain achievable maximum channel capacity in accordance with the pre-estimated signal-to-noise ratio. By using a 450-nm directly modulated laser diode (LD) with an available modulation bandwidth of ∼2.75 GHz, DMT with PCS technique is experimentally realized with a net data rate of 18.09 Gbit/s over 5 m, 17.21 Gbit/s over 25 m, and 12.62 Gbit/s over 35 m underwater transmission, giving substantial capacity improvement of 32.22%, 30.03%, and 27.55%, respectively, in comparison with the widely used regular QAM formats in DMT with bit-power loading scheme. The figure of merit of the UOWC system in terms of entropy, generalized mutual information (GMI), and normalized GMI are also presented. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to employ PCS-QAM-DMT in a UOWC system, and it is also the highest data rate ever reported for a single LD in UOWC.

16.6 Gbps data rate for underwater wireless optical transmission with single laser diode achieved with discrete multi-tone and post nonlinear equalization.

In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate a 450-nm laser underwater wireless optical transmission system by using adaptive bit-power loading discrete multi-tone (DMT) and Volterra series based post nonlinear equalization. Post nonlinear equalization mitigates the nonlinear impairment of the UWOC system. By incorporating post nonlinear equalization with a 3rd-order diagonal plane kernel, the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be improved by ~2 dB compared with a linear equalization method. The measured transmission capacity of the UWOC system is 16.6 Gbps over 5 m, 13.2 Gbps over 35 m, and 6.6 Gbps over 55 m tap water channel, with bit error rates (BERs) below the standard hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) limit of 3.8 × 10-3. The used electrical signal bandwidth is 2.75 GHz, corresponding to electrical spectrum efficiency of ∼6 bit/s/Hz. The distance-datarate product reaches 462 Gbps*m at 35 m tap water transmission. To the best of our knowledge, both the data rate and distance-data rate product are the largest reported for single laser diode.

Low-complexity frequency domain nonlinear compensation for OFDM based high-speed visible light communication systems with light emitting diodes.

A novel frequency domain nonlinear compensation method, FD-NC, is proposed for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based visible light communication (VLC) system. By tackling the memory nonlinear impairments from light emitting diodes (LEDs) in the frequency domain rather than in the time domain, the proposed method has much lower computational complexity than the conventional time domain Volterra nonlinear compensation method (TD-NC). Both theoretical derivation and experimental investigation of the proposed method in OFDM based VLC systems with four types of commercial LEDs are presented. The results of experiments show that the proposed low-complexity FD-NC method with a moderate truncation factor achieves a performance comparable to that of the TD-NC. The application of FD-NC method in the bit-power loading OFDM VLC system is also experimentally demonstrated. Compared with the linear equalization case, at a bit error rate (BER) of 3.8 × 10-3 (a), the transmission distance of a 960 Mbps VLC system can be extended from 0.7 m to 1.8 m by the FD-NC, and (b) the achievable system capacity can be enhanced by 18.7%~36.5% for transmission distance in the range of 0.5 m~2 m with the FD-NC. The complexity analysis shows that the required number of real-valued multiplications (RNRM) of the FD-NC is independent of linear or nonlinear memory length. The reduction of RNRM achieved by the FD-NC over the TD-NC becomes more profound for a larger nonlinear memory length or a smaller truncation factor.

Do factors associated with older pedestrian crash severity differ? A causal factor analysis based on exposure level of pedestrians.

OBJECTIVE: Older pedestrians are more likely to have severe or fatal consequences when involved in traffic crashes. Identifying the factors contributing to the severity and possible interdependencies between factors in specific exposure areas is the first step to improving safety. Therefore, examining the causal factors' impact on pedestrian-vehicle crash severity in a given area is vital for formulating effective measures to reduce the risk of pedestrian fatalities and injuries. METHODS: This study implements the Thiessen polygon algorithm deployed to define older pedestrians' exposure influence area. Enabling trip characteristics and built environment information as exposure index settings for the background of the pedestrian severity causal analysis. Then, structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to conduct a factor analysis of the crash severity in high- and low-exposure areas. The SEM evaluates latent factors such as driver risk attitude, risky driving behavior, lack of risk perception among older pedestrians, natural environment, adverse road conditions for driving or walking, and vehicle conditions. The SEM crash model also establishes the relationship between each latent factor. RESULTS: In total, drivers' risky driving behavior (0.270, p < 0.05) in low-exposure areas significantly impacts older pedestrian crash severity more than in high-exposure areas. Lack of risk perception among older pedestrians (0.232, p < 0.05) is the most critical factor promoting crash severity in high-exposure areas. The natural environment (0.634, p < 0.05) in high-exposure areas positively influences older pedestrians' lack of risk perception more than in low-exposure areas. CONCLUSIONS: Significant group differences (p-values ∼ 0.001-0.049) existed between the causal factors of the high-exposure risk areas and the low-exposure risk factors. Different exposure intervals require detailed scenarios based on the critical risks identified. The crash severity promotion measures in different exposure areas can be focused on according to the critical causes analyzed. Those clues, in turn, can be used by transportation authorities in prioritizing their plans, policies, and programs toward improving the safety and mobility of older pedestrians.