Digital coherent receiver based transmitter penalty characterization.

For optical communications links where receivers are signal-power-starved, such as through free-space, it is important to design transmitters and receivers that can operate as close as practically possible to theoretical limits. A total system penalty is typically assessed in terms of how far the end-to-end bit-error rate (BER) is from these limits. It is desirable, but usually difficult, to determine the division of this penalty between the transmitter and receiver. This paper describes a new rigorous and computationally based method that isolates which portion of the penalty can be assessed against the transmitter. There are two basic parts to this approach: (1) use of a coherent optical receiver to perform frequency down-conversion of a transmitter's optical signal waveform to the electrical domain, preserving both optical field amplitude and phase information, and (2): software-based analysis of the digitized electrical waveform. The result is a single numerical metric that quantifies how close a transmitter's signal waveform is to the ideal, based on its BER performance with a perfect software-defined matched-filter receiver demodulator. A detailed description of applying the proposed methodology to the waveform characterization of an optical burst-mode differential phase-shifted keying (DPSK) transmitter is experimentally demonstrated.

Multi-aperture digital coherent combining for free-space optical communication receivers.

Space-to-ground optical communication systems can benefit from reducing the size, weight, and power profiles of space terminals. One way of reducing the required power-aperture product on a space platform is to implement effective, but costly, single-aperture ground terminals with large collection areas. In contrast, we present a ground terminal receiver architecture in which many small less-expensive apertures are efficiently combined to create a large effective aperture while maintaining excellent receiver sensitivity. This is accomplished via coherent detection behind each aperture followed by digitization. The digitized signals are then combined in a digital signal processing chain. Experimental results demonstrate lossless coherent combining of four lasercom signals, at power levels below 0.1 photons/bit/aperture.

Dynamic on-demand defragmentation in flexible bandwidth elastic optical networks.

While flexible bandwidth elastic optical networking is a promising direction for future networks, the spectral fragmentation problem in such a network inevitably raises the blocking probability and significantly degrades network performance. This paper addresses the spectral defragmentation problem using an auxiliary graph based approach, which transforms the problem into a matter of finding the maximum independent set (MIS) in the constructed auxiliary graph. The enabling technologies and defragmentation-capable node architectures, together with heuristic defragmentation algorithms are proposed and evaluated. Simulation results show that the proposed min-cost defragmentation algorithms can significantly reduce the blocking probability of incoming requests in a spectrally fragmented flexible bandwidth optical network, while substantially minimizing the number of disrupted connections.

Demonstration of free space coherent optical communication using integrated silicon photonic orbital angular momentum devices.

We propose and demonstrate silicon photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for free-space spatial-division-multiplexing (SDM) optical transmission with multiplexed orbital angular momentum (OAM) states over a topological charge range of -2 to +2. The silicon PIC fabricated using a CMOS-compatible process exploits tunable-phase arrayed waveguides with vertical grating couplers to achieve space division multiplexing and demultiplexing. The experimental results utilizing two silicon PICs achieve SDM mux/demux bit-error-rate performance for 1­b/s/Hz, 10-Gb/s binary phase shifted keying (BPSK) data and 2-b/s/Hz, 20-Gb/s quadrature phase shifted keying (QPSK) data for individual and two simultaneous OAM states.

Full-field technique for measuring the spectral evolution of reconfigurable photonic filters.

This Letter demonstrates a measurement technique based on frequency-to-time mapping and coherent detection, which enables the complete (i.e., amplitude and phase) characterization of dynamically reconfigurable photonic filters. We apply this technique to a unit cell from a silicon CMOS-compatible photonic lattice filter that has a rapidly changing transfer function with an 8.33 ns update time, 120 MHz spectral resolution, and 12 GHz bandwidth. These dynamic measurements allow characterization of transients, thermal effects, filter fidelity, and other time-dependent phenomena during switching.

Bandwidth scalable, coherent transmitter based on the parallel synthesis of multiple spectral slices using optical arbitrary waveform generation.

We demonstrate an optical transmitter based on dynamic optical arbitrary waveform generation (OAWG) which is capable of creating high-bandwidth (THz) data waveforms in any modulation format using the parallel synthesis of multiple coherent spectral slices. As an initial demonstration, the transmitter uses only 5.5 GHz of electrical bandwidth and two 10-GHz-wide spectral slices to create 100-ns duration, 20-GHz optical waveforms in various modulation formats including differential phase-shift keying (DPSK), quaternary phase-shift keying (QPSK), and eight phase-shift keying (8PSK) with only changes in software. The experimentally generated waveforms showed clear eye openings and separated constellation points when measured using a real-time digital coherent receiver. Bit-error-rate (BER) performance analysis resulted in a BER < 9.8 × 10(-6) for DPSK and QPSK waveforms. Additionally, we experimentally demonstrate three-slice, 4-ns long waveforms that highlight the bandwidth scalable nature of the optical transmitter. The various generated waveforms show that the key transmitter properties (i.e., packet length, modulation format, data rate, and modulation filter shape) are software definable, and that the optical transmitter is capable of acting as a flexible bandwidth transmitter.

Experimental demonstration of flexible bandwidth networking with real-time impairment awareness.

We demonstrate a flexible-bandwidth network testbed with a real-time, adaptive control plane that adjusts modulation format and spectrum-positioning to maintain quality of service (QoS) and high spectral efficiency. Here, low-speed supervisory channels and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) enabled real-time impairment detection of high-speed flexible bandwidth channels (flexpaths). Using premeasured correlation data between the supervisory channel quality of transmission (QoT) and flexpath QoT, the control plane adapted flexpath spectral efficiency and spectral location based on link quality. Experimental demonstrations show a back-to-back link with a 360-Gb/s flexpath in which the control plane adapts to varying link optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) by adjusting the flexpath's spectral efficiency (i.e., changing the flexpath modulation format) between binary phase-shift keying (BPSK), quaternary phase-shift keying (QPSK), and eight phase-shift keying (8PSK). This enables maintaining the data rate while using only the minimum necessary bandwidth and extending the OSNR range over which the bit error rate in the flexpath meets the quality of service (QoS) requirement (e.g. the forward error correction (FEC) limit). Further experimental demonstrations with two flexpaths show a control plane adapting to changes in OSNR on one link by changing the modulation format of the affected flexpath (220 Gb/s), and adjusting the spectral location of the other flexpath (120 Gb/s) to maintain a defragmented spectrum.

Demonstration of high-fidelity dynamic optical arbitrary waveform generation.

We experimentally demonstrate a dynamic line-by-line optical arbitrary waveform generation technique capable of generating continuous and bandwidth scalable high-fidelity waveforms without update rate limitations. Two quadrature modulators are used to create up to three spectral slices that are coherently combined by a passband-shaped multiplexer into a single contiguous spectrum to form complex optical waveforms with up to 30 GHz of bandwidth and 6 ns record lengths.

Modulation-format agile, reconfigurable Tb/s transmitter based on optical arbitrary waveform generation.

This paper presents the concept of an optical transmitter based on optical arbitrary waveform generation (OAWG) capable of synthesizing Tb/s optical signals of arbitrary modulation format. Experimental and theoretical demonstrations in this paper include generation of data packet waveforms focusing on (a) achieving high spectral efficiencies in quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) and 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM) modulation formats, (b) generation of complex data waveform packets used for optical-label switching (OLS) consisting of a data payload and label on a carrier and subcarrier, and (c) repeatability and accuracy of duobinary (DB) data packet waveforms with BER measurements. These initial demonstrations are based on static OAWG, or line-by-line pulse shaping, to generate repeated waveforms of arbitrary shape. In addition to experimental and theoretical demonstrations of static OAWG, simulated results show dynamic OAWG, which involves encoding continuous data streams of arbitrary symbol sequence on data packet waveforms of arbitrary length.

Compact 10 GHz loopback arrayed-waveguide grating for high-fidelity optical arbitrary waveform generation.

We demonstrate a high-performance optical arbitrary waveform shaper based on a single 10 GHz arrayed-waveguide grating with 64 loopback waveguides and integrated amplitude and phase modulators on each waveguide. The design is compact and self-aligning and allows for bidirectional operation. The device's complex transfer function is manipulated and measured over the full 640 GHz passband. To demonstrate optical arbitrary waveform shaping, high-fidelity 15-line shaped waveforms are measured with cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating.