Low noise frequency comb carriers for 64-QAM via a Brillouin comb amplifier.

Optical frequency comb lines with poor carrier to noise ratio (CNR) are significantly improved by Brillouin amplification using its extreme narrow bandwidth gain to suppress out of band noise, enabling higher quality signal modulation. Its application to spectral lines of narrow 10 GHz pitch and poor CNR is shown to suppress the otherwise strong phase distortion caused by poor CNR after encoding with 96 Gb/s DP-64-QAM signals and restore the bit error rate (BER) to below the limit for standard forward error correction (FEC). This is also achieved with the required frequency shifted optical pump for amplification obtained by seeding it from the comb itself, sparing the need for lasers and frequency locking. Simultaneous CNR improvement for 38 comb lines is also achieved with BER restored to below the FEC limit, enabled by a multi-line pump that is pre-dispersed to suppress its spectral distortion from the Kerr effect in the gain medium. Carrier performance at minimum BER shows minimal noise impact from the Brillouin amplifier itself. The results highlight the unique advantage of Brillouin gain for phase sensitive communications in transforming otherwise noisy spectral lines into useful high quality signal carriers.

Signal phase regeneration through multiple wave coherent addition enabled by hybrid optical phase squeezer.

A newly proposed concept, which is called hybrid optical phase squeezer (HOPS), achieves multi-level optical phase quantization through coherent addition of two (dual-wave scheme) or three (triple-wave scheme) optical waves exploiting optical parametric processes and electro-optic modulation. The triple-wave scheme enables signal phase regeneration free from phase-to-amplitude noise transfer, which is inevitable in the dual-wave scheme. By using HOPS in the dual-wave scheme, 3-fold phase-noise reduction was achieved for 24-Gb/s QPSK signals with a slight increase of amplitude noise. On the other hand, HOPS in the triple-wave scheme allowed phase regeneration of 12-Gb/s BPSK signal with a suppression of phase-to-amplitude noise transfer.

Transmission and pass-drop operations of mixed baudrate Nyquist OTDM-WDM signals for all-optical elastic network.

We propose the use of Nyquist OTDM-WDM signal for highly efficient, fully elastic all-optical networks. With the possibility of generation of ultra-coarse yet flexible granular channels, Nyquist OTDM-WDM can eliminate guard-bands in conventional WDM systems, and hence improves the spectral efficiency in network perspective. In this paper, transmission and pass-drop operations of mixed baudrate Nyquist OTDM-WDM channels from 43 Gbaud to dual-polarization 344 Gbaud are successfully demonstrated over 320 km fiber link with four FlexGrid-compatible WSS nodes. A stable clock recovery is also carried out for different baudrate Nyquist OTDMs by optical null-header insertion technique.

No guard-band wavelength translation of Nyquist OTDM-WDM signal for spectral defragmentation in an elastic add-drop node.

We demonstrate a seamless spectral defragmentation in an elastic all-optical add-drop node based on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) channels of Nyquist optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) signal. A 172 Gbaud Nyquist OTDM signal occupying a 215 GHz range is elastically shifted adjacent to its neighboring channel, completely filling a variable spectral gap caused by the dropped channel. The frequency shift is done in a dual-stage polarization-diversity four wave mixing-based converter using polarization-maintaining highly nonlinear fiber. The spectrally defragmented signals are successfully transmitted over a 80 km fiber link with BER<10(-9).

Generation of multi-wavelength picosecond pulses with tunable pulsewidth and channel spacing using a Raman amplification-based adiabatic soliton compressor.

We experimentally demonstrate pulsewidth-tunable picosecond multi-wavelength pulse generation at 10 Gb/s by the use of a Raman amplification-based adiabatic soliton compressor (RA-ASC). Multi-wavelength seed pulse trains are generated by a commercially available electroabsorption modulator and then compressed by using the RA-ASC. The pulsewidths of the compressed pulses can be simultaneously controlled from 16.0 ps to 2.0 ps by adjusting Raman pump power. Operating wavelength range of our scheme are also investigated, showing the possibility for wide channel spacing operations.

Transmission performance of a wavelength and NRZ-to-RZ format conversion with pulsewidth tunability by combination of SOA- and fiber-based switches.

An all-optical signal processing scheme coupling wavelength conversion and NRZ-to-RZ data format conversion with pulsewidth tunability into one by combination of SOA- and fiber-based switches, is experimentally demonstrated, and its transmission performance is investigated. An 1558 nm NRZ data signal is converted to RZ data format at 1546 nm with widely tunable pulsewidth from 20 % to 80 % duty cycle at the bit-rate of 10 Gb/s. The investigation on transmission performance of the converted RZ signals at each different pulsewidth is carried out over various standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) links up to 65 km long without dispersion compensation. The results clarify a significant improvement on transmission performance of converted signal in comparison with the conventional NRZ signal through tunable pulsewidth management and show the existence of an optimal pulsewidth for the RZ data format at each transmission distance with particular cumulative dispersion. The optimal pulsewidths of the converted RZ signal and its corresponding power penalties against the NRZ signal are also investigated in different SSMF links.