Estimating divergently routed nonlinearly interfering channel powers using cross phase modulation.

The deployment of coherent transceivers in legacy networks requires significant investment in installation. We propose a method enabling autonomous (re-)configuration of an optical channel, which would be advantageous in legacy networks and necessary in proposed future networks utilizing a flexible frequency grid and software defined components such as reconfigurable optical add drop multiplexers (ROADM). We consider potential interfering optical channels propagating with the prospective channel along part of the fiber link which are dropped before arrival at the receiver. The method uses a commercially available line card transmitting a 40Gbit/s polarization multiplexed quadrature phase shift keying (PM-QPSK) probe channel to characterize an optical channel. The power of the nearest neighboring channels is then inferred by examining its bit error rate (BER) which is impacted by cross phase modulation (XPM) from the aggressor channels. In a 4 node network with 2 ROADMs using up to 6 aggressor OOK channels, we successfully deduce the neighboring channel power down to -2 dBm, and an extra improvement down to -3.5 dBm is gained, by measuring at an offset to the international telecommunication union (ITU) grid which also reveals inequality in neighbor channel powers.

Optical frequency tripling with improved suppression and sideband selection.

A novel optical dispersion tolerant millimetre-wave radio-over-fibre system using optical frequency tripling technique with enhanced and selectable sideband suppression is demonstrated. The implementation utilises cascaded optical modulators to achieve either an optical single sideband (OSSB) or double sideband-suppressed carrier (DSB-SC) signal with high sideband suppression. Our analysis and simulation results indicate that the achievable suppression ratio of this configuration is only limited by other system factors such as optical noise and drifting of the operational conditions. The OSSB transmission system performance is assessed experimentally by the transport of 4 WiMax channels modulating a 10 GHz optical upconverted RF carrier as well as for optical frequency doubling and tripling. The 10 GHz and tripled carrier at 30 GHz are dispersion tolerant resulting both in an average relative constellation error (RCE) of -28.7 dB after 40 km of fibre.