Optical time-division multiplexing signal processing using electro-optic modulators

A new scheme for highly flexible optical Nyquist pulses generation is proposed by using a dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator (DPMZM) and an intensity modulator (IM) without any external optical filter. The optical Nyquist pulses generator includes two stages. At the first stage, 2-, 3-, or 5-carrier light sources with two different frequency spacing are generated by utilizing a DPMZM. At the second stage, the light source used as seed light is then sent to IM, and two forms of optical frequency combs with spectral line flatness of less than 0.7 dB can be finally obtained by simply adjusting the DC bias and amplitude of radio frequency signal applied to IM. Ideal sinc-shaped Nyquist pulses are also generated in the time domain with bandwidth from 75 to 225 GHz and repetition rate from 40 to 80 ps. Simulation results show the high flexibility, effectiveness, and practicability of the proposed scheme, which can be applied to future high-capacity optical transmission systems.

We propose and demonstrate a novel scheme for clock recovery and simultaneous fourfold optical time-division demultiplexing using a dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator based optoelectronic oscillator. 25-GHz prescaled optical clock with a 23% duty cycle and a 22-dB extinction ratio is successfully extracted from both 100-Gb/s on-off keying (OOK) and differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) optical time-division-multiplexing (OTDM) signal. The timing jitters (100 Hz to 10 MHz) are measured to be 195.9 fs and 125.6 fs for the optical clock extracted from the 100-Gb/s OOK and DPSK signal, respectively. Error-free optical time-division demultiplexing is also achieved simultaneously with clock recovery. By adjusting the phase shifter in the OEO loop, all four channels can be selectively demultiplexed. The power penalties at a bit error rate (BER) of 10⁻⁹ for the four demultiplexed channels are measured to be between 0.8 dB and 1.2 dB for the OOK signal and between 0.9 dB and 1.5 dB for the DPSK signal.

Flat optical frequency comb generation by using one DPMZM and superposed harmonics

A tunable ultraflat optical frequency comb generator based on the optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) using a dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator (DPMZM) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. By incorporating a tunable DPMZM-OEO, five comb lines were generated with frequency spacing from 5 to 12 GHz under a wide central wavelength tuning from 1530 to 1560 nm, and a comb flatness of 0.3 dB is obtained. The corresponding signal generated by the DPMZM-OEO is also measured, and the phase noise of the frequency tunable signals is as low as −125 dBc/Hz at 10-kHz frequency offset.

Under the conventional scheme to generate an optical frequency comb (OFC) using an electro-optic modulator (EOM), the frequency interval of the OFC is determined via the frequency of the fundamental tone of the radio frequency (RF) driving signals. In this work, we use two harmonics without the fundamental tone to drive two EOMs, where the frequency interval of the generated flat OFC is the frequency of the fundamental tone. The orders of the two harmonics are coprime. Specifically, one harmonic drives the first branch of the dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator (DPMZM) only, and the other harmonic drives the phase modulator (PM). The flatness of the OFC is achieved by adjusting the amplitude and phase of the RF driving harmonics as well as the bias of the EOM. Both a simulation and an experiment were carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. When the second harmonic drives the DPMZM and the third harmonic drives the PM, an 11-comb line OFC is generated, where the flatness of the OFC was 0.63 dB and 0.65 dB under the simulation and experiment, respectively. When the third harmonic drives the DPMZM and the second harmonic drives the PM, a 13-comb line OFC is generated, where the flatness of the OFC was 0.62 dB and 0.95 dB under the simulation and experiment, respectively. We also investigate the performance of the generated OFC when one harmonic drives two branches of the DPMZM and the other harmonic drives the PM. The comparison of the OFCs’ performance demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

An effective optical Nyquist pulse generator is proposed based on a dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator. By spectrum broadening and chirp compensation, optical Nyquist pulses with adjustable duty cycle of 21.6%, 8.1% and 5.4% are generated.

A novel automatic bias control (ABC) is proposed to generate arbitrary signals with a dualparallel Mach-Zehnder modulator. We demonstrated the practical generation of arbitrary modulated signals using the proposed scheme.

A simple method for clock recovery

The linear frequency swept light source is a critical device for several sensing applications, including FMCW LiDAR, with which the maximum sensing distance is determined by the coherence length of the light source and the spatial resolution is limited by the frequency scan nonlinearity. Here, we report what we believe to be a novel approach to generate highly coherent optical linear frequency sweeps (LFS) with a Fourier domain mode-locked (FDML) opto-electronic oscillator (OEO) deploying carrier suppressed single sideband (CS-SSB) modulation enabled by a dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DP-MZM), with the coherence length determined by the fixed frequency laser used in the OEO, without the need of an expensive high-speed arbitrary waveform generator (AWG). Concurrently, a radio frequency (RF) LFS synchronized with the optical LFS is also generated with the FDML OEO. We obtained a nearly ideal optical LFS around 1550 nm with a side-mode suppression ratio of 27.4 dB, by controlling the bias point and the RF power feeding back to the DP-MZM in the OEO loop. The resulting dual optical and RF LFS' achieved a chirp rate of 27.27 MHz/µs and a frequency tuning range of 0.6 GHz, which can be extended to 142 MHz/µs and 2.0 GHz, respectively by reducing the size of the tunable ring filter circuit inside the OEO loop. By using pre-distortion method, the residual nonlinearity is reduced to 1.9881 × 10-5, and the root mean square (RMS) value of the frequency swept nonlinearity is less than 0.764 MHz. Our dual optical and RF LFS generation with a CS-SSB FDML-OEO has the advantages of long coherence length, high tuning speed, excellent frequency tuning linearity and repeatability, and potentially low cost, which can be used to make a dual optical and RF FMCW ranging system (LiDAR and RADAR) and are attractive for many applications, such as 3D sensing and autonomous driving, as well as optical frequency domain reflectometer (OFDR), and other applications requiring fast and reliable linear frequency sweeps in either optical and RF domains.

Eugen Lach, Dieter Baums, Jamal Bouayad-Amine, Claudia Hache, Hansjorg Haisch, Edgar KUhn,Klaus Satzke, Michael Schilling, JUrgen Weber, Erich ZielinskiAlcatel Corporate Research Center, StuttgartOptoelectronic Components Division, Dept. ZFZ/WOLorenzstraBe 10, D-70435 Stuttgart, GermanyPhone: (+49) 71 1/821-42983, FAX: (÷49) 71 1/821-46355e-mail: elach@rcs.sel.deABSTRACTWe report on monolithically integrated active/passive coupled cavity mode locked lasers for 1 .55 m realized by selectivearea growth technology of InGaAs(P) quantum wells. Mode locked FP or DBR lasers are fabricated with an integratedcavity comprising up to three different band gaps. The devices emit short light pulses at around 10 GHz repetion rate withpulse width down to 8.7 ps. A time-bandwidth product of 0.5 is achieved for mode locked DBR lasers. Active / passiveintegrated mode locked laser are used for generation of optical 10 GHz clock signal from optical 10 Gb/s PRBS Ri datastream injected into the laser cavity.Keywords: mode locked laser, selective area rowth (SAG), ThM, 01DM, clock recovery, picosecond optical pulses

This letter experimentally demonstrates all-optical clock recovery and optical 3R regeneration for a 10-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) format. The 3R regenerator has achieved 10 000-hop cascadability and 1 000 000-km transmission for a pseudorandom bit sequence (PRBS) of 2 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">7</sup> -1. A semiconductor-optical-amplifier-based Mach-Zehnder interferometer (SOA-MZI) as an NRZ to pseudoreturn-to-zero converter and a Fabry-Perot filter perform the all-optical clock recovery from an NRZ signal. A pair of SOA-MZIs combined with a synchronous modulator provides the 2R regeneration and retiming functions. The cascadability of the 3R regenerator is investigated in a recirculating loop transmission experiment by eye diagram, bit-error rate, and Q-factor measurements. Transmission with the 3R regenerator shows significant performance improvement over that without 3R regeneration. A 100-hop cascadability is also demonstrated for PRBS 2 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">31</sup> -1, enabling 10 000-km error-free transmission with a low power penalty of 1.2 dB

An overview of the most promising optical clock recovery techniques for all-optical ultrafast communication is presented. A step towards a system view for the various techniques is taken, transferring the clock recovery concepts available from the electronic domain into the optical domain, and leading to block diagram interpretation for both open-loop and closed-loop systems. This is essential for future system analyses that will permit design and comparison of different techniques using established analytical tools.

We demonstrate optical packet clock recovery with locking in less than 700 ps (25 bits) using a novel device which is compatible with other monolithic components. Regenerative capabilities are analyzed using bit

This paper experimentally demonstrates the cascaded operation of an optical-label switching router for up to 101 hops, with optical label swapping, optical clock recovery, and 3R regeneration (re-amplification, reshaping, and retiming) at each hop. The optical label swapping utilizes all-optical payload/label separation and label rewriting with subcarrier label. An interferometer wavelength converter enables the reshaping function, while the synchronous modulation driven by the optically recovered packet clock performs the retiming function. The optical label swapping and 3R regeneration enable the packets to traverse a large number of hops while maintaining the signal quality to support the scalability of the optical-label switching network

We have proposed a scheme of radio-over-fiber (RoF) system employing a dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator (DP-MZM) based on four-wave mixing (FWM) in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). In this scheme, the pump and the signal are generated by properly adjusting the direct current bias, modulation index of the DP-MZM, and the phase difference between the sub-MZMs. Because of the pump and the signal deriving from the same optical wave, the polarization states of the two lightwaves are copolarized. The single-pump FWM is polarization insensitive. After FWM and optical filtering, the optical millimeter-wave with octuple frequency is generated. About 40-GHz RoF system with a 2.5-Gbit / s signal is implemented by numerical simulation; the result shows that it has a good performance after the signal is transmitted over 40-km single-mode fiber. Then, the effects of the SOA’s injection current and the carrier-to-sideband ratio on the system performance are discussed by simulation, and the optimum value for the system is obtained.