All-optical modulation-transparent wavelength multicasting in a highly nonlinear fiber Sagnac loop mirror.

An all-optical wavelength multicasting scheme using four-wave mixing (FWM) in a highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) Sagnac loop mirror has been demonstrated. This proposed scheme has the advantage that even when the wavelength of a multicast channel overlaps with the pump-pump generated idler, clear eye diagram can still be observed. Six and ten 10-Gb/s multicast channels, compliant with the ITU grid, are successfully obtained by using two- and three-pump lasers, respectively. Multicasting of on-off shift keying (OOK) and differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) signals are both successfully demonstrated. The maximum power penalty of the multicast channels is less than 3.5 dB. Furthermore, compared with the non-loop configuration, up to 1.2 dB power penalty improvement can be achieved in this proposed Sagnac loop configuration.

Simultaneous erasure and rewriting of a subcarrier-multiplexed label in an all-optical label swapping scheme.

A simplified all-optical label swapping scheme is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for all-optical packet switching. This scheme is based on the sub-carrier label multiplexing technique but it significantly reduces the cost and complexity of the label erasure and rewriting process at the intermediate nodes. This is accomplished using a shared interferometric filter for all wavelength channels to separate the payloads and labels as well as using gain-saturated RSOAs for label erasure and rewriting. Label swapping process is realized through re-assigning optical subcarriers to each output wavelength channel and rewriting the new label with RSOAs. The BER-free transmissions experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme.

Multipoint free-space optics system for short-range communications between flight platforms.

The problems associated with using typical free-space optics (FSO) transceivers for multipoint communications on flight platforms, such as satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles, in a cluster are discussed and the transceivers are found to be unsuitable for concurrent multipoint communications in those platforms. To overcome the problems, a multipoint FSO system design is proposed. The design of the multipoint system is described and the performance of the multipoint receiver is evaluated in terms of receive gain under different conditions. The proposed multipoint system design offers a promising way to implement concurrent multipoint communications on flight platforms with power, weight, and size advantages compared to the use of multiple transceivers.

High-speed optical switch fabrics with large port count.

We report a novel architecture that can be used to construct optical switch fabrics with very high port count and nanoseconds switching speed. It is well known that optical switch fabrics with very fast switching time and high port count are challenging to realize. Currently, one of the most promising solutions is based on a combination of wavelength-tunable lasers and the arrayed waveguide grating router (AWGR). To scale up the number of ports in such switches, a direct method is to use AWGRs with a high channel count. However, such AWGRs introduce very large crosstalk noise due to the close wavelength channel spacing. In this paper, we propose an architecture for realizing a high-port count optical switch fabric using a combination of low-port count AWGRs, optical ON-OFF gates and WDM couplers. Using this new methodology, we constructed a proof-of concept experiment to demonstrate the feasibility of a 256 x 256 optical switch fabric. To our knowledge, this port count is the highest ever reported for switch fabrics of this type.

Beam divergence changing mechanism for short-range inter-unmanned aerial vehicle optical communications.

The problems associated with using a single fixed beam divergence for short-range inter-unmanned aerial vehicle free-space optical communications are discussed. To overcome the problems, a beam divergence changing mechanism is proposed. Four different methods are then proposed to implement the beam divergence changing mechanism. The performance of these methods is evaluated in terms of transmission distance under adverse weather conditions. The results show that the performance is greatly improved when the beam divergence changing mechanism is used.

Light beam coupling between standard single mode fibers and highly nonlinear photonic crystal fibers based on the fused biconical tapering technique.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate light beam coupling between a single-mode fiber (SMF) and a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (HN-PCF) based on the fused biconical tapering (FBT) technique. In our experiment, a standard SMF is pre-tapered to match its propagation constant to that of a HN-PCF. In order to remove the condensation in the air holes, the temperature is increased gradually to preheat the fibers. An appropriate level of hydrogen flow is administered to avoid the air-hole collapse. As a result, coupling ratio exceeding 90% between the SMF and HN-PCF is achieved. This technique avoids back Fresnel reflection, mode-field diameter (MFD) mismatch and fiber-core misalignment, bubble generation and air-hole collapse in the interface fusion splice.

Photonic microwave phase shifter/modulator based on a nonlinear optical loop mirror incorporating a Mach-Zehnder interferometer.

We realize a novel photonic microwave phase shifter/modulator based on a nonlinear optical loop mirror incorporating a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. A near-linear phase shifter exceeding 180 degrees and a phase modulation with 2.5 Gbit/s baseband signal are obtained for a 10 GHz microwave signal by this proposed device.