Coherent O-band WDM transmission of DP-16QAM over a 50-km BDFA-amplified link.

We present wavelength-division multiplexed coherent transmission in an O-band amplified link enabled by bismuth-doped fiber amplifiers (BDFAs). Transmission of 4 × 25 GBd DP-16QAM (4 × 200 Gb/s) is demonstrated over a single span of 50-km length, occupying a bandwidth of 4.7 THz across the wavelengths 1323 nm to 1351 nm.

Quantitative study of birefringence effects in fiber-based orthogonal-pump FWM systems.

Optical fibers have unwanted residual birefringence due to imperfections in fabrication processes and environmental conditions. This birefringence will randomize the state of polarization of propagating signals and may harm the performance of four-wave mixing based processing devices. Here, we present a quantitative study of the effects of birefringence in orthogonal-pump four-wave mixing systems, and identify different regions of operation of the optical fiber, mainly determined by the relative magnitude between the physical length L and beat length Lb. This finding clarifies the characteristics of the complex interplay between birefringence and four-wave mixing and advises appropriate fiber length selection for minimized polarization dependent gain.

Experimental investigation of BDFA-based O-band direct-detection transmission using an optical recirculating loop.

We implemented a bismuth-doped fiber amplifier (BDFA) based optical recirculating loop to investigate the performance of amplified O-band transmission over appreciable distances. Both single-wavelength and wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) transmission were studied, with a variety of direct-detection modulation formats. We report on (a) transmission over lengths of up to 550 km in a single-channel 50-Gb/s system operating at wavelengths ranging from 1325 nm to 1350 nm, and (b) rate-reach products up to 57.6 Tb/s-km (after accounting for the forward error correction redundancy) in a 3-channel system.

Experimental demonstration of single-span 100-km O-band 4×50-Gb/s CWDM direct-detection transmission.

We report on what is to the best of our knowledge the longest 50-Gb/s/λ O-band wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) transmission. A pair of in-house built bismuth-doped fiber amplifiers (BDFAs) and the use of Kramers-Kronig detection-assisted single-sideband transmission are adopted to overcome the fiber loss and chromatic dispersion, respectively, in a reach-extended O-band coarse WDM (CWDM) system with a channel spacing of ∼10 nm. Through experiments on an amplified 4×50-Gb/s/λ direct-detection system based on booster and pre-amp BDFAs, we show the superior performance of single-sideband transmission in terms of both optical signal-to-noise ratio sensitivity and uniformity in performance amongst CWDM channels relative to double-sideband transmission after both 75-km and 100-km lengths of single-mode fiber. As a result, up to 100-km reach with comparable performance at all 50-Gb/s channels was achieved without the need for in-line optical amplification.

A Review of Capabilities and Scope for Hybrid Integration Offered by Silicon-Nitride-Based Photonic Integrated Circuits.

In this review we present some of the recent advances in the field of silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits. The review focuses on the material deposition techniques currently available, illustrating the capabilities of each technique. The review then expands on the functionalisation of the platform to achieve nonlinear processing, optical modulation, nonvolatile optical memories and integration with III-V materials to obtain lasing or gain capabilities.

Demonstration of >1Tbit/s WDM OWC with wavelength-transparent beam tracking-and-steering capability.

Beam tracking-and-steering is crucial for the operation of high-speed, narrow beam, optical wireless communication (OWC) systems. Using a system based on two sets of low-cost cameras for continuous beam tracking and a set of mirrors for steering, we demonstrate here a high-capacity (>1Tbit/s) ten-channel wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) OWC system based on discrete multitone transmission. The results, which are achieved over a 3.5-m perpendicular distance and across a lateral coverage up to 1.8 m, constitute to the best of our knowledge, the highest aggregate OWC capacity at this coverage.

Experimental characterization of an o-band bismuth-doped fiber amplifier.

The recent emergence of bismuth-doped fiber amplifiers (BDFAs) offers the potential to transmit high-speed WDM signals over long distances in the O-band spectral region, thereby greatly enhancing the scope of systems utilizing these wavelengths. In this paper, we present a comprehensive experimental study on several basic characteristics of an O-band BDFA based on a phosphosilicate optical fiber, including the frequency-dependent noise figure, gain tilt (static and dynamic), transient response, and polarization dependent gain. We discuss our findings and their implications on the use of BDFA technology in high bit-rate multichannel systems.

Numerical and experimental study on the impact of chromatic dispersion on O-band direct-detection transmission.

The recent emergence of efficient O-band amplification technologies has enabled the consideration of O-band transmission beyond short reach. Despite the O-band being a low chromatic dispersion (CD) window, the impact of CD will become increasingly significant when extending the reach of direct-detection (DD) systems. In this work, we first numerically investigate the 3-dB bandwidth of single-mode fibers (SMF) and the CD-restricted transmission reach in intensity-modulation DD systems, confirming the significant difference between low- and high-dispersion O-band wavelengths. We then carry out experimental transmission studies over SMF for distances of up to 70 km at two different wavelengths, the low-dispersion 1320 nm and the more dispersive 1360 nm, enabled by the use of an O-band bismuth-doped fiber amplifier as a preamplifier at the receiver. We compare three 50-Gb/s optical DD formats, namely, Nyquist on-off keying (OOK), Nyquist 4-ary pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) and Kramers-Kronig detection-assisted single-sideband quadrature phase shift keying (KK-QPSK) half-cycle subcarrier modulation. Our results show that at both wavelengths, OOK and QPSK exhibit better bit error rate performance than PAM4. When transmitting over 70-km of SMF at the less dispersive wavelength of 1320 nm, 50-Gb/s OOK modulation offers more than 1.5-dB optical power sensitivity improvement at the photodiode (PD) compared to 50-Gb/s QPSK. Conversely, at 1360 nm, the required optical power to the PD can be reduced by more than 3 dB by using QPSK instead of OOK.

Supercontinuum generation in tantalum pentoxide waveguides for pump wavelengths in the 900 nm to 1500 nm spectral region.

We characterize the spectral broadening performance in silica clad and unclad Tantalum pentoxide (Ta2O5) waveguides as a function of the input pulse central wavelength and polarization, sweeping over a wavelength range from 900 nm to 1500 nm, with an average incident power of 110 mW. The waveguides are 0.7 µm high and between 2.2 and 3.2 µm wide, and the SiO2 top cladding layer is 2 µm thick. We model the dispersion of the higher order spatial modes, and use numerical simulations based on the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation to analyze the nonlinear behaviour of the spatial modes within the waveguides as well as the dispersive effects observed in the experiments. We achieve octave spanning supercontinuum with an average power of 175 mW incident on the waveguide at 1000 nm pump wavelength.

Co-design of a differential transimpedance amplifier and balanced photodetector for a sub-pJ/bit silicon photonics receiver.

This paper presents the design and implementation of a fully differential optical receiver, which is aimed for short reach intensity modulation and direct detection (IMDD) transceiver links. A Si-Ge balanced photodetector (PD) has been co-designed and packaged with a novel differential transimpedance amplifier (TIA). The TIA design is realized with a standard 28 nm CMOS process and operates with a standard digital supply (1V). Without using any equalization or DSP techniques, the proposed receiver can operate up to 54 Gb/s with a BER less than the KP4 limit (2.2×10-4) under an optical modulation amplitude (OMA) of -8.6 dBm, while the power efficiency has been optimized to 0.55 pJ/bit (0.98 pJ/bit if output buffer is included).

Selective wavelength conversion in a few-mode fiber.

We experimentally demonstrate a means to selectively enhance wavelength conversion of WDM channels on a 100 GHz grid exploiting nonlinear effects between the spatial modes of a few mode fiber. The selectivity of parametric gain is obtained by dispersion design of the fiber such that the inverse group velocity curves of the participating modes are parallel and their dispersion is suitably large. We describe both theoretically and experimentally the observed dependence of the idler gain profile on pump mode (quasi) degeneracy.

Si-rich Si nitride waveguides for optical transmissions and toward wavelength conversion around 2 µm.

We show that subwavelength Si-rich nitride waveguides efficiently sustain high-speed transmissions at 2 µm. We report the transmission of a 10 Gbit/s signal over 3.5 cm with negligible power penalty. Parametric conversion in the pulsed pump regime is also demonstrated using the same waveguide structure with an efficiency as high as -18 dB.

Frequency comb generation in a silicon ring resonator modulator.

We report on the generation of an optical comb of highly uniform in power frequency lines (variation less than 0.7 dB) using a silicon ring resonator modulator. A characterization involving the measurement of the complex transfer function of the ring is presented and five frequency tones with a 10-GHz spacing are produced using a dual-frequency electrical input at 10 and 20 GHz. A comb shape comparison is conducted for different modulator bias voltages, indicating optimum operation at a small forward-bias voltage. A time-domain measurement confirmed that the comb signal was highly coherent, forming 20.3-ps-long pulses.

Experimental comparison of direct detection Nyquist SSB transmission based on silicon dual-drive and IQ Mach-Zehnder modulators with electrical packaging.

We have designed and fabricated a silicon photonic in-phase-quadrature (IQ) modulator based on a nested dual-drive Mach-Zehnder structure incorporating electrical packaging. We have assessed its use for generating Nyquist-shaped single sideband (SSB) signals by operating it either as an IQ Mach-Zehnder modulator (IQ-MZM) or using just a single branch of the dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (DD-MZM). The impact of electrical packaging on the modulator bandwidth is also analyzed. We demonstrate 40 Gb/s (10Gbaud) 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) Nyquist-shaped SSB transmission over 160 km standard single mode fiber (SSMF). Without using any chromatic dispersion compensation, the bit error rates (BERs) of 5.4 × 10-4 and 9.0 × 10-5 were measured for the DD-MZM and IQ-MZM, respectively, far below the 7% hard-decision forward error correction threshold. The performance difference between IQ-MZM and DD-MZM is most likely due to the non-ideal electrical packaging. Our work is the first experimental comparison between silicon IQ-MZM and silicon DD-MZM in generating SSB signals. We also demonstrate 50 Gb/s (12.5Gbaud) 16-QAM Nyquist-shaped SSB transmission over 320 km SSMF with a BER of 2.7 × 10-3. Both the silicon IQ-MZM and the DD-MZM show potential for optical transmission at metro scale and for data center interconnection.

Minimizing inter-channel cross-phase modulation with optical phase conjugation in asymmetric fibre links.

Using analytic and numerical modelling of fibre transmission systems that employ optical phase conjugation (OPC), we show inter-channel cross-phase modulation depends on the integrated square error between nonlinear profiles before and after OPC and that arranging amplifiers and tuning power levels is crucial to minimizing noise. We derive modulation transparent formulas for phase noise and optimal power settings. Examples are shown for 16 and 64 quadrature amplitude modulation.

Broadband telecom to mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in a dispersion-engineered silicon germanium waveguide.

We demonstrate broadband supercontinuum generation (SCG) in a dispersion-engineered silicon-germanium waveguide. The 3 cm long waveguide is pumped by femtosecond pulses at 2.4 µm, and the generated supercontinuum extends from 1.45 to 2.79 µm (at the -30 dB point). The broadening is mainly driven by the generation of a dispersive wave in the 1.5-1.8 µm region and soliton fission. The SCG was modeled numerically, and excellent agreement with the experimental results was obtained.

Fast and broadband fiber dispersion measurement with dense wavelength sampling.

We report on a method to obtain dispersion measurements from spectral-domain low-coherence interferograms which enables high accuracy (≈ ps/(nm · km)), broadband measurements and the determination of very dense (up to 20 points/nm over 500 nm) data sets for both dispersion and dispersion slope. The method exploits a novel phase extraction algorithm which allows the phase associated with each sampling point of the interferogram to be calculated and provides for very accurate results as well as a fast measurement capability, enabling close to real time measurements. The important issue of mitigating the measurement errors due to any residual dispersion of optical elements and to environmental fluctuations was also addressed. We performed systematic measurements on standard fibers which illustrate the accuracy and precision of the technique, and we demonstrated its general applicability to challenging problems by measuring a carefully selected set of microstructured fibers: a lead silicate W-type fiber with a flat, near-zero dispersion profile; a hollow core photonic bandgap fiber with strongly wavelength dependent dispersion and dispersion slope; a small core, highly birefringent index guiding microstructured fiber, for which polarization resolved measurements over an exceptionally wide (≈ 1000 nm) wavelength interval were obtained.

Towards nonlinear conversion from mid- to near-infrared wavelengths using Silicon Germanium waveguides.

We demonstrate the design, fabrication and characterization of a highly nonlinear graded-index SiGe waveguide for the conversion of mid-infrared signals to the near-infrared. Using phase-matched four-wave mixing, we report the conversion of a signal at 2.65 µm to 1.77 µm using a pump at 2.12 µm.

Pulse shaping in mode-locked fiber lasers by in-cavity spectral filter.

We numerically show the possibility of pulse shaping in a passively mode-locked fiber laser by inclusion of a spectral filter into the laser cavity. Depending on the amplitude transfer function of the filter, we are able to achieve various regimes of advanced temporal waveform generation, including ones featuring bright and dark parabolic-, flat-top-, triangular- and saw-tooth-profiled pulses. The results demonstrate the strong potential of an in-cavity spectral pulse shaper for controlling the dynamics of mode-locked fiber lasers.

FWM-based wavelength conversion of 40 Gbaud PSK signals in a silicon germanium waveguide.

We demonstrate four wave mixing (FWM) based wavelength conversion of 40 Gbaud differential phase shift keyed (DPSK) and quadrature phase shift keyed (QPSK) signals in a 2.5 cm long silicon germanium waveguide. For a 290 mW pump power, bit error ratio (BER) measurements show approximately a 2-dB power penalty in both cases of DPSK (measured at a BER of 10(-9)) and QPSK (at a BER of 10(-3)) signals that we examined.