We present a novel practical method for group delay compensation of Bragg gratings imprinted in planar waveguides for high speed DWDM systems. Although Bragg grating-based wavelength selective devices in optical fibers have reached their maturity, similar components built on the basis of planar technology are still the research issue. We analyze an integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer-based Add-Drop multiplexer equipped with two pairs of gratings, one designed as a wavelength selective filter and the other one as a group delay compensator.
To solve the processors performance limitations, new chip-to-chip and on-chip communication needs to be introduced. Optical technology will play here a crucial role. Optical links will move into the chip multiprocessors connecting tens or even hundreds of processing elements and forming a photonic network for communication between them. In this talk we will present our solutions of silicon-based CMOS-compatible optical components for the main building blocks in application to computer interconnects.
Similarly to optical telecommunication, optical fibers interconnect today computer systems performing very fast communication between servers and supercomputers or between racks in modern data centers. In the near future optical links will move into the chip multiprocessors connecting tens or even hundreds of processing elements and forming a photonic network for communication between them. For these applications novel, highly integrated and CMOS compatible devices need to be developed. In this talk we will present some of our recent silicon-based CMOS-compatible optical components for application in computer chip-to-chip and on-chip communication
Silicon photonics is an emerging technology offering novel solutions in different areas requiring highly integrated communication systems for optical networking, sensing, bio-applications and computer interconnects. Silicon photonicsbased communication has many advantages over electric wires for multiprocessor and multicore macro-chip architectures including high bandwidth data transmission, high speed and low power consumption. Following the INTEL's concept to "siliconize" photonics, silicon device technologies should be able to solve the fabrication problems for six main building blocks for realization of optical interconnects: light generation, guiding of light including wavelength selectivity, light modulation for signal encoding, detection, low cost assembly including optical connecting of the devices to the real world and finally the electronic control systems.
Silicon-based nanophotonic waveguides and components fabricated in silicon-on-insulator technology build a platform for high density photonic integrated circuits, where active III-V devices can be incorporated using evanescent field coupling. These circuits can be fabricated with standard CMOS technology processing, allowing for low cost mass production in applications such as optical networks, computer interconnects and sensing. Connecting of these integrated structures to the real world of optical fibers appears is an important problem to be solved. In this paper we discuss some solutions and present some of fabricated devices including a grating coupler-polarization splitter with over 50% efficiency for both polarizations and a nonuniform grating coupler with 68% efficiency for single polarization. To the best of our knowledge, they are the highest coupling efficiencies obtained by regular SOI grating couplers for both, single polarization and polarization splitting.
Silicon-on-insulator material structure allows for very high light confinement in the silicon core due to its high refractive index. The advantages of this technology include the possibility to miniaturize devices and integrate different functions on a single chip, reduction of optical loss and power consumption and potential perspectives for low cost mass production in CMOS technology line. Together with these advantages some new problems appear in comparison to weakly guided light in silica-on-silicon components, causing additional challenges for researchers to be solved. Besides much higher demands for fabrication accuracy, high refractive index contrast introduces additional optical input/output coupling problems as well as much higher polarization sensitivity of nanophotonic structures. Here we will propose some solutions for these problems and illustrate them with designed and fabricated components
Wavelength Division Multiplexing systems use multiplexers and demultiplexers to increase network capacity by allowing several information channels to be placed into one fiber. Depending on the application multiplexers and demultiplexers can have wide, coarse or dense channel spacing as well as different number of channels that they process. There are many techniques available today for realization of these passive, wavelength selective components including: thin film filters, Bragg gratings, arrayed waveguide gratings and echelle gratings. The last two solutions appear to be most suitable for wafer scale mass production. Silicon-based technology additionally allows for a high level of integration and compatibility with CMOS processing. Here we discuss issues related to different solutions and fabrication technologies and compare two of them based on planar lightwave circuits. We will illustrate with designed and fabricated components for different applications.
In this paper we discuss different unconventional nanophotonic solutions using photonic crystal-based components including filters, sensors and polarization splitter, which utilizes positive and negative refracted beams. We illustrate them with design, technology and fabricated devices.
Depending on the application in optical communication systems different wavelength division multiplexing devices are used to increase network capacity by allowing several wavelength channels to be transmitted by one fiber, to add or drop different wavelength channels or to separate or put together channels carrying different services. Depending on the application such devices can have wide, coarse or dense channel spacing. Furthermore they can handle different number of channels. In this paper we present some of such devices, their functionality, structures and fabrication technologies.
An optical microcavity based on pillar arrays has been fabricated in Si/SiO2 material system. Transmission measurement was taken and a quality factor as high as 27,600 was observed. This cavity was tested for sensing applications by immersing into optical fluids with accurate refractive indices. For refractive index change of 0.01, a resonance peak wavelength shift of 3.5 nm was measured. We also compare cavities consisting of pillars with different aspect ratios.
Coherent detection employing multilevel modulation format has become one of the most promising technologies for next generation high speed transmission system due to the high power and spectral efficiencies. With the powerful digital signal processing (DSP), coherent optical receivers allow the significant equalization of chromatic dispersion (CD), polarization mode dispersion (PMD), phase noise (PN) and nonlinear effects in the electrical domain. Recently, the realizations of these DSP algorithms for mitigating the channel distortions in the transmission system are the most attractive investigations.
The CD equalization can be performed by the digital filters developed in the time and the frequency domain, which can suppress the fiber dispersion effectively. The PMD compensation is usually performed in the time domain with the adaptive least mean square (LMS) and constant modulus algorithms (CMA) equalization. Feed-forward and feed-back carrier phase estimation algorithms are employed to mitigate the phase noise from the transmitter and local oscillator lasers. The fiber nonlinearities are compensated by using the digital backward propagation methods based on solving the nolinear Schrodinger (NLS) equation and the Manakov equation.
In this dissertation, we present a comparative analysis of three digital filters for chromatic dispersion compensation, an analytical evaluation of carrier phase estimation with digital equalization enhanced phase noise and a brief discussion for PMD adaptive equalization. To implement these investigations, a 112-Gbit/s non-return-to-zero polarization division multiplexed quadrature phase shift keying (NRZ-PDM-QPSK) coherent transmission system is realized in the VPI simulation platform. With the coherent transmission system, these CD equalizers have been compared by evaluating their applicability for different fiber lengths, their usability for dispersion perturbations and their computational complexity. Meanwhile, the bit-error-rate (BER) floor in carrier phase estimation using a one-tap normalized LMS filter is evaluated analytically, and the numerical results are compared to a differential QPSK detection system.
Coherent detection employing multilevel modulation formats has become one of the most promising technologies for next generation high speed transmission systems due to the high power and spectral efficiencies. Using the powerful digital signal processing (DSP), coherent optical receivers allow the significant equalization of chromatic dispersion (CD), polarization mode dispersion (PMD), phase noise (PN) and nonlinear effects in the electrical domain. Recently, the realizations of these DSP algorithms for mitigating the channel distortions in the coherent transmission systems are the most attractive investigations.
The CD equalization can be performed by the digital filters developed in the time and the frequency domain, which can suppress the fiber dispersion effectively. The PMD compensation is usually performed in the time domain with the adaptive least mean square (LMS) and constant modulus algorithms (CMA) equalization. Feed-forward and feed-back carrier phase estimation (CPE) algorithms are employed to mitigate the phase noise (PN) from the transmitter (TX) and the local oscillator (LO) lasers. The fiber nonlinearities are compensated by using the digital backward propagation methods based on solving the nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equation and the Manakov equation.
In this dissertation, we present a comparative analysis of three digital filters for chromatic dispersion compensation, a comparative evaluation of different carrier phase estimation methods considering digital equalization enhanced phase noise (EEPN) and a brief discussion for PMD adaptive equalization. To implement these investigations, a 112-Gbit/s non-return-to-zero polarization division multiplexed quadrature phase shift keying (NRZ-PDM-QPSK) coherent transmission system with post-compensation of dispersion is realized in the VPI simulation platform. In the coherent transmission system, these CD equalizers have been compared by evaluating their applicability for different fiber lengths, their usability for dispersion perturbations and their computational complexity. The carrier phase estimation using the one-tap normalized LMS (NLMS) filter, the differential detection, the block-average (BA) algorithm and the Viterbi-Viterbi (VV) algorithm is evaluated, and the analytical predictions are compared to the numerical simulations. Meanwhile, the phase noise mitigation using the radio frequency (RF) pilot tone is also investigated in a 56-Gbit/s NRZ single polarization QPSK (NRZ-SP-QPSK) coherent transmission system with post-compensation of chromatic dispersion. Besides, a 56-Gbit/s NRZ-SP-QPSK coherent transmission system with CD pre-distortion is also implemented to analyze the influence of equalization enhanced phase noise in more detail.
High bit rates optical communication systems pose the challenge of their tolerance to linear and nonlinear fiber impairments. Digital filters in coherent optical receivers can be used to mitigate the chromatic dispersion entirely in the optical transmission system. In this paper, the least mean square adaptive filter has been developed for chromatic equalization in a 112-Gbit/s polarization division multiplexed quadrature phase shift keying coherent optical transmission system established on the VPIphotonics simulation platform. It is found that the chromatic dispersion equalization shows a better performance when a smaller step size is used. However, the smaller step size in least mean square filter will lead to a slower iterative operation to achieve the guaranteed convergence. In order to solve this contradiction, an adaptive filter employing variable-step-size least mean square algorithm is proposed to compensate the chromatic dispersion in the 112-Gbit/s coherent communication system. The variable-step-size least mean square filter could make a compromise and optimization between the chromatic dispersion equalization performance and the algorithm converging speed. Meanwhile, the required tap number and the converged tap weights distribution of the variable-step-size least mean square filter for a certain fiber chromatic dispersion are analyzed and discussed in the investigation of the filter feature.
The frequency domain equalizers (FDEs) employing two types of overlap-add zero-padding (OLA-ZP) methods are applied to compensate the chromatic dispersion in a 112-Gbit/s non-return-to-zero polarization division multiplexed quadrature phase shift keying (NRZ-PDM-QPSK) coherent optical transmission system. Simulation results demonstrate that the OLA-ZP methods can achieve the same acceptable performance as the overlap-save method. The required minimum overlap (or zero-padding) in the FDE is derived, and the optimum fast Fourier transform length to minimize the computational complexity is also analyzed.
In this paper, we investigate the phase noise elimination employing an optical pilot carrier in the high speed coherent transmission system considering the equalization enhanced phase noise (EEPN). The numerical simulations are performed in a 28-Gsymbol/s quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) coherent system with a polarization multiplexed pilot carrier. The carrier phase estimation is implemented by the one-tap normalized least mean square (NLMS) filter and the differential phase detection, respectively. Simulation results demonstrate that the application of the optical pilot carrier is very effective for the intrinsic laser phase noise cancellation, while is less efficient for the EEPN mitigation.
High bit rates optical communication systems pose the challenge of their tolerance to linear and nonlinear fiber impairments. Coherent optical receivers using digital signal processing techniques can mitigate the fiber impairments in the optical transmission system, including the chromatic dispersion equalization with digital filters. In this paper, an adaptive finite impulse response filter employing normalized least mean square algorithm is developed for compensating the chromatic dispersion in a 112-Gbit/s polarization division multiplexed quadrature phase shift keying coherent communication system, which is established in the VPI simulation platform. The principle of the adaptive normalized least mean square algorithm for signal equalization is analyzed theoretically, and at the meanwhile, the taps number and the tap weights in the adaptive finite impulse response filter for compensating a certain fiber chromatic dispersion are also investigated by numerical simulation. The chromatic dispersion compensation performance of the adaptive filter is analyzed by evaluating the behavior of the bitor-rate versus the optical signal-to-noise ratio, and the compensation results are also compared with other present digital filters.
We present a novel investigation on the enhancement of phase noise in coherent optical transmission system due to electronic chromatic dispersion compensation. Two types of equalizers, including a time domain fiber dispersion finite impulse response (FD-FIR) filter and a frequency domain blind look-up (BLU) filter are applied to mitigate the chromatic dispersion in a 112-Gbit/s polarization division multiplexed quadrature phase shift keying (PDM-QPSK) transmission system. The bit-error-rate (BER) floor in phase estimation using an optimized one-tap normalized least-mean-square (NLMS) filter, and considering the equalization enhanced phase noise (EEPN) is evaluated analytically including the correlation effects. The numerical simulations are implemented and compared with the performance of differential QPSK demodulation system. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America
We present a comparative study on three carrier phase estimation algorithms, including a one-tap normalized least mean square (NLMS) method, a block-average method, and a Viterbi-Viterbi method in the n-level phase shift keying coherent transmission systems considering the equalization enhanced phase noise (EEPN). In these carrier phase estimation methods, the theoretical bit-error-rate floors based on traditional leading-order Taylor expansion are compared to the practical simulation results, and the tolerable total effective linewidths (involving the transmitter, the local oscillator lasers and the EEPN) for a fixed bit-error-rate floor are evaluated with different block sizes, when the fiber nonlinearities are neglected. The complexity of the three carrier phase estimation methods is also discussed. We find that the carrier phase estimation methods in practical systems should be analyzed based on the simulation results rather than the traditional theoretical predictions, when large EEPN is involved. The one-tap NLMS method can always show an acceptable behavior, while the step size is complicated to optimize. The block-average method is efficient to implement, but it behaves unsatisfactorily when using a large block size. The Viterbi-Viterbi method can show a small improvement compared to the block-average method, while it requires more computational complexity.
We demonstrate the chromatic dispersion equalization employing a time-domain filter in a 112-Gbit/s polarization division multiplexed quadrature phase shift keying coherent system. The required tap number of the filter is analyzed from anti-aliasing and pulse broadening. The dynamic range of the filter is evaluated by using different number of taps.
We present a comparative analysis of three popular digital filters for chromatic dispersion compensation: a time-domain least mean square adaptive filter, a time-domain fiber dispersion finite impulse response filter, and a frequency-domain blind look-up filter. The filters are applied to equalize the chromatic dispersion in a 112-Gbit/s non-return-to-zero polarization division multiplexed quadrature phase shift keying transmission system. The characteristics of these filters are compared by evaluating their applicability for different fiber lengths, their usability for dispersion perturbations, and their computational complexity. In addition, the phase noise tolerance of these filters is also analyzed. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America
Coherent optical receivers with digital filters can mitigate the impairments in optical transmission system. In this paper, an adaptive filter employing NLMS algorithm is developed for chromatic dispersion compensation in a 112-Gbit/s PDM-QPSK coherent communication system. The performance of the adaptive filter is analyzed by comparing with present digital filters .
High bit rates optical communication systems pose the challenge of their tolerance to linear and nonlinear fiber impairments. Coherent optical receivers using digital signal processing techniques can mitigate the fiber impairments in the optical transmission system, including the chromatic dispersion equalization with digital filters. In this paper, an adaptive finite impulse response filter employing normalized least mean square algorithm is developed for compensating the chromatic dispersion in a 112-Gbit/s polarization division multiplexed quadrature phase shift keying coherent communication system, which is established in the VPI Simulation platform. The principle of the adaptive normalized least mean square algorithm for signal equalization is analyzed theoretically, and at the meanwhile, the taps number and the tap weights in the adaptive finite impulse response filter for compensating a certain fiber chromatic dispersion are also investigated by numerical simulation. The chromatic dispersion compensation performance of the adaptive filter is analyzed by evaluating the behavior of the bit-error-rate versus the optical signal-to-noise ratio, and the compensation results are also compared with other present digital filters.
In this article, the ordinary optical waveguides are investigated by the near field optical microscopy (NSOM). Three kinds of experimental systems are set up and the corresponding operation modes of NSOM (illumination mode, illumination-collection mode and collection mode) are realized and analyzed.
A type of light absorber made of continuous layers of metal and dielectric films is studied. The metal films can have thicknesses close to their skin depths in the wavelength range concerned, which allows for both light transmission and reflection. Resonances induced by multiple reflections in the structure, when combined with the inherent lossy nature of metals, result in strong absorption spectral features. An eigen-mode analysis is carried out for the plasmonic multilayer nanostructures which provides a generic understanding of the absorption features. Experimentally, the calculation is verified by a reflection measurement with a representative structure. Such an absorber is simple to fabricate. The highly efficient absorption characteristics can be potentially deployed for optical filter designs, sensors, accurate photothermal temperature control in a micro-environment and even for backscattering reduction of small particles, etc.
The metal-wire based metamaterial is found to be able to reflect TM-polarized light with a higher efficiency compared to plain metal. The prospect of such medium for designing a hollow-core infrared fiber is investigated.
We describe a layered metal-dielectric waveguide, whose fundamental mode has an effective index as high as 7.35 at 1.55 mu m, enabling subwavelength spatial confinement. The loss is found to be reasonable in relation to the confinement. The indefinite dielectric tensor of the stratified metamaterial core generally leads to multimode operation of the waveguide, exhibiting a "reversed" mode ordering contrary to conventional waveguides. The waveguide features a strong leveraging in modal index change subject to a change of index in the dielectric layers, opening the design possibilities of very compact active electro-optic devices.
Cylinder-shaped perfect lens deduced from the coordinate transformation method is proposed. The previously reported perfect slab lens is noticed to be a limiting form of the cylindrical lens when the inner radius approaches infinity with respect to the lens thickness. Connaturality between a cylindrical lens and a slab lens is affirmed by comparing their eigenfield transfer functions. We numerically confirm the subwavelength focusing capability of such a cylindrical lens with consideration of material imperfection. Compared to a slab lens, a cylindrical lens has several advantages, including finiteness in cross section and ability in lensing with magnification or demagnification. Immediate applications of such a cylindrical lens can be in high-resolution imaging and lithography technologies. In addition, its invisibility property suggests that it may be valuable for noninvasive electromagnetic probing.
An InGaAsP multiple-quantum-well asymmetric Fabry-Wrot modulator/detector has been developed for radio-over-fiber systems. The measured bandwidth is more than 6 GHz and the total insertion loss is 7.1 dB. The property of nonlinearity and spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) has been studied theoretically. By optimizing the operation optical wavelength and bias voltage based on the numerical simulation, fifth-order nonlinearity dominates the intermodulation distortion and an SFDR of 101 dB center dot Hz(4/5) has been achieved experimentally.
An InGaAsP multiple-quantum-well asymmetric Fabry-Perot modulator/detector has been developed for radioover-fiber systems. The measured bandwidth is more than 6 GHz and the total insertion loss is 7.1 dB. The property of nonlinearity and spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) has been studied theoretically. By optimizing the operation optical wavelength and bias voltage based on the numerical simulation, fifth-order nonlinearity dominates the intermodulation distortion and an SFDR of 101 dB. Hz(4/5) has been achieved experimentally.
The temperature-dependent effects in a segmented travelling-wave electroabsorption modulator are demonstrated and analysed. Optimum operation voltages with the highest modulation efficiency at different temperatures are identified. This can ensure the modulator working at 50 Gbit/s with RF extinction ratio > 8.4 dB between 10-50degreesC at lambda = 1540 nm.
We report on the fabrication of a monolithically integrated semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and a reflective electro-absorption transceiver (EAT) for 40-60 GHz radio-over-fiber applications. The EAT can either function as a transmitter (reflective modulator) or as a receiver (photodetector) depending on operation mode. The SOA and the EAT sections are based on different InGaAsP multiple quantum-well active layers connected by a butt joint. Benzocyclobutene is used to reduce the capacitance beside the ridge mesa. Devices are designed to have a peaked response at the operating frequency through the design of microwave waveguides on top of the devices. The packaged device exhibits at 0.1 mW optical input power an amplified DC responsivity of 18.5 mA mW(-1) and a modulation efficiency of 0.67 mW V-1. The estimated radio frequency loss at 40 GHz of an optical link consisting of two SOA-EAT devices was 23 dB using an unmodulated optical input carrier to the transmitter of 0.94 mW.
Due to the birefringence dispersion, the polarization coupling parameter measurement in high-birefringence fiber decreases obviously with the fiber length, especially for long-distance fibers. In this paper, two methods for mitigating the birefringence dispersion in a long-distance fiber are proposed. The first method is a spectral-domain measurement method. The experimental setup and results are described in detail. The other method is a time-domain numerical dispersion compensation algorithm to amend the coupling strength calculation equation. It is based on the fact that the interferogram envelope area is constant even with the existence of birefringence dispersion. The experimental result shows that the time-domain algorithm has high accuracy, and the absolute deviation is less than 1%. The two methods are validated to mitigate the birefringence dispersion in the long-distance high-birefringence fiber effectively.
White light interferometry is used to measure the distributed polarization coupling (DPC) in polarization-maintaining fibers (PMFs). By using a scanning Michelson interferometer to compensate the optical path difference (OPD) induced by the modal birefringence of PMFs, both the coupling strength and positions of the coupling points can be acquired. In ideal DPC measurement, the two reflective mirrors on the fixed and scanning arms of the Michelson interferometer are normal to each other. But in practice, the movable reflective mirror cannot be aligned normally to the fixed mirror exactly, which leads to an angular misalignment. The angular misalignment causes a variation of the OPD, which will reduce the fringe visibility. The theoretical simulation is investigated correspondingly. Consequently, the angular error leads to the miscalculation of the polarization coupling intensity. Based on the experimental results, a revised coupling strength calculation equation is proposed to minimize the influence of angular misalignment.
A polymeric solid-state microcavity dye laser of the size comparable to a lasing wavelength is modeled by means of the finite element method (FEM). Lasing modes are calculated taking into account the gain material properties, such as absorption, dispersion and fluorescence. Study of the microcavity tolerance against possible geometrical imperfections demonstrates good robustness of the chosen shape and stability of the operation under possible cavity distortions.
A 10 Gb/s RZ-AMI format is generated using a 45 nm tunable Modulated-Grating Y-branch Chirp Managed Laser (CML) with an optical delay line interferometer (DLI), achieving +/- 800 ps/nm dispersion tolerance window.
A high-speed all-optical temporal differentiator based on a compact silicon microring resonator with a radius of 20 mm is demonstrated. 80 Gbit/s signal differentiation is experimentally realised.
We present the design, fabrication, and characterization of an ultracompact silicon-on-insulator-based echelle grating triplexer. It is based on the cross-order design, which utilizes different diffraction orders to cover a large spectral range from 1.3 to 1.5 mu m with three channels located at 1310, 1490, and 1550 nm and with a footprint of 150 mu m X 130 mu m.
We present a radio-frequency (RF) and bit-rate scalable technique for multigigabit wireless signal generation based on all-optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) and photonic up-conversion. Coherent detection supported by digital signal processing is used for signal demodulation and data recovery. In order to demonstrate the RF frequency scalability and bit-rate transparency, the system is tested at 60 GHz and in the 75- to 110-GHz band at the baud rates of 5 and 10 Gbaud. In terms of the bit rate, the proposed system is experimentally tested up to 40 Gb/s for wireless signal generation and demodulation. The wireless transmission is not considered in this letter. Additionally, a novel digital carrier phase/frequency recovery structure is employed to enable robust phase and frequency tracking between the beating lasers.
On the foundation of joint experience acquired by several research centres there was defined the roadmap to the desired single technological platform for fabrication of a specific class of photonic integrated circuits, which are controlled by mechanical means. In the paper the challenges of fabrication of such photonic circuits are discussed. The main arguments in favour of the Silicon-on-Insulator materials system as the basis for the platform are presented. Options for the mechanics-to-optics arrangement, materials and processes are described and illustrated with the current achievements from the authors' labs. In the roadmap the preference is given to the vertical arrangement in which, the mechanical part is stacked above the waveguiding layer. A flexible trimming routine is designed to complement the process flow if the technologies developed cannot provide the required reproducibility.