All-optical clock recovery of 20 Gbit/s NRZ-DPSK signals using polarization-maintaining fiber loop mirror filter and semiconductor optical amplifier fiber ring laser

All-optical clock recovery (CR) from 20 Gbit/s nonreturn-to-zero differential phase-shift-keying (NRZ-DPSK) signals are demonstrated experimentally by using a polarization-maintaining fiber loop mirror filter (PMF-LMF) and a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) fiber ring laser. Only by adjusting polarization controller (PC), NRZ-DPSK signals were conveniently and fast converted to pseudo return-to-zero (PRZ) signal via PMF-LMF. Then the PRZ signals are injected into the SOA fiber laser for CR. The recovered clock signals is with the extinction ratio (ER) of 10 dB and the root-mean-square (RMS) timing jitter of 750 fs in 2³¹ − 1 long pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS) NRZ-DPSK signals measurement. Moreover, the broad wavelength tunability of recovered clock stemmed from the use of SOAs as modulator and the gain medium are shown too.     

Transmission performance of 20 × 10 Gb/s WDM signals using cascaded optimized SOAs with OOK and DPSK modulation formats

We investigated 20 channels at 10 Gb/s wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission over 1190 km single mode fiber and dispersion compensating fiber using cascaded inline semiconductor optical amplifier at a span of 70 km for RZ-DPSK (return zero differential phase-shift keying) modulation format by using same channel spacing, i.e. 100 GHz. We show for RZ-OOK (return zero on-off keying) format a transmission distance of up to 1050 km with Q factor more than 15 dB, without any power drops. We developed the SOA model for inline amplifier having minimum cross-talks and ASE (amplified spontaneous emission) noise power with sufficient gain. At optimal bias current of 400 mA, a high constant gain of 36.5 dB is obtained up to a saturation power of 21.36 mW. So reduction of cross-talk and distortion is possible by decreasing the bias current at appropriate amplification factor.The DPSK modulation format has less cross-talk as compared to OOK format for nonlinearities and saturation case. The impact of optical power received and Q factor at different distance for both RZ-OOK and RZ-DPSK modulation format has been illustrated. We have shown the optical spectrum and clear Eye diagram at the transmission distance of 1190 km in RZ-DPSK system and 1050 km in RZ-OOK systems.The bit error rate (BER) for all channels observed is less than 10⁻¹⁰ up to gain saturation for both DPSK and OOK systems. Finally, we investigated that the transmission distance decreases with a decrease in channel spacing of up to 20 GHz.     

Single AWG based clock extraction from WDM signals with mixed formats and mixed bit-rates

A simple and flexible simultaneous clock extraction for WDM signals with mixed modulation formats and bit-rates is proposed and demonstrated using a single commercial arrayed waveguide grating (AWG), which acts both detuned multi-channel filter and demultiplexer for the input signals. By using an AWG with 100 GHz spacing, clock extraction from transmitted multi-channel nonreturn to zero (NRZ) and NRZ differential phase shift keying (NRZ-DPSK) signals at mixed bit-rates from 10 to 40 Gb/s with 200 GHz spacing is achieved simultaneously. By cascading a clock recovery module, clock signal can be easily recovered from the preprocessed signals with enhanced clock tones.     

Boost up of four wave mixing signal in semiconductor optical amplifier for 40 Gb/s optical frequency conversion

The 40 Gb/s optical frequency converter for non-return to zero differential phase shift keying (NRZ-DPSK) signal by using four wave mixing in semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) have achieved sucessfully. The optimized signal-to-pump ratio for NRZ-DPSK by using optimized SOA structure with enhanced FWM effect is also evaluated. The optimum signal-to-pump ratio is 12 dB and 10 dB with Q factor penalty of 0.685 dB and 0.663 dB. The dependence of four wave mixing efficiency and converted signal power on signal input power is studied and it is evaluated that four wave mixing efficiency decreases with increase in the input power. The impact of pump power, signal-to-pump ratio, and SOA parameters with Q factor penalty for 40 Gb/s has been illustrated. It has shown that converted signal power increases up to the saturation power of semiconductor optical amplifier, then decreases. It is observed that for the optimum pump power, OSNR of converted signal varies little with signal input power.     

Tunable 19 × 10 GHz L-band FP-SOA based multi-wavelength mode-locked fiber laser

We present a multi-wavelength mode-locked fiber ring laser incorporating a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and a Fabry-Perot semiconductor optical amplifier (FP-SOA). Because the gain of the SOA is depleted by an external injection optical signal, the SOA acts as a loss modulator. The FP-SOA serves as a tunable comb filter. The presented laser source can generate 19 synchronized wavelength channels with the extinction ratio of about 21 dB, each mode-locked at 10 GHz, and mode-locked pulse width is about 40 ps. Oscillation wavelengths band can be tuned by adjusting the bias current of the SOA, and wavelength spacing also can be changed by using a tunable optical delay line (ODL) or a temperature controller. The polarization-insensitive devices ensure that the output power is rather stable. This fiber laser has potential applications in longer waveband (L-band) within the low-attenuation window.     

Optically controllable variable fiber optical attenuator integrated in conventional optical fiber

New type of optically controllable variable fiber optical attenuator based on thermo-optical effect in liquid cladding of optical fiber is described. The thermo-optical effect in liquid cladding optical fiber causes refractive index contrast changes in core–cladding interface, what enables to change the propagating optical signal power with temperature. The temperature change is achieved by fiber based heating element using laser radiation. Attenuation up to −12 dB was achieved in static dependence and dynamic response confirmed rise time up to 24 ms.     

Simple tunable multiwavelength Brillouin/Erbium fiber laser utilizing short-length photonic crystal fiber

We have demonstrated a simple ring cavity tunable multiwavelength Brillouin/Erbium fiber laser (MWBEFL), in which 70 m highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (HNL-PCF) is used as the Brillouin gain medium. The fiber laser utilizes recycling mechanism to enhance stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). The configuration that consists of only 3 optical components is easy to be integrated and improves the practicality. At the maximum 1480 nm pump power of 110 mW and the Brillouin pump power of 3 dBm, 10 stable output channels with more than 10 dB optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) and 0.078 nm channel spacing could achieve 10 nm tuning ranges.     

All-optical continuously tunable delay with a high linear-chirp-rate fiber Bragg grating based on four-wave mixing in a highly-nonlinear photonic crystal fiber

A scheme for hi-fi all-optical continuously tunable delay is proposed. The signal wavelength is converted to a desired idler wavelength and converted back after being delayed by a high linear-chirp-rate (HLCR) fiber Bragg grating (FBG) based on four-wave mixing (FWM) in a highly-nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (HN-PCF). In our experiment, 400 ps (more than 8 full width of half maximum, FWHM) tunable delay is achieved for a 10 GHz clock pulse with relative pulse width broaden ratio (RPWBR) of 2.08%. The power penalty is only 0.3 dB at 10⁻⁹ BER for a 10 Gb/s 2³¹−1 pseudo random bit sequence (PRBS) data.     

Experimental demonstration on 40 Gbit/s all-optical multicasting logic XOR gate for NRZ-DPSK signals using four-wave mixing in highly nonlinear fiber

We propose and demonstrate all-optical multicasting logic XOR gate for non-return-to-zero differential phase-shift keying (NRZ-DPSK) signals by using non-degenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) in a highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF). Theoretical analysis regarding the operation principle of NRZ-DPSK logic XOR gate is clearly described by deriving an analytical solution under the non-depletion approximation. The NRZ-DPSK logic XOR operation is attributed to the linear relationship of complex amplitudes between converted idlers and input NRZ-DPSK signals. By using three non-degenerate FWM processes in an HNLF, 40 Gbit/s all-optical multicasting logic XOR gate for NRZ-DPSK signals are successfully demonstrated in the experiment.     

Wavelength-tunable erbium fiber ring laser in single-frequency operation utilizing Fabry-Perot laser with Sagnac cavity

We propose and demonstrate experimentally a stabilized and wavelength-selective erbium-doped fiber ring laser in single-longitudinal-mode operation with Fabry-Perot laser diode (FP-LD) and using a tunable bandpass filter (TBF) inside and outside a Sagnac ring cavity. The side-mode suppression ratios of 21 dB and 36.5 dB and the output power of -3.6 dB m and -8.7 dB m in the wavelengths of 1524.45-1562.35 nm and 1531.07-1562.35 nm with the tuning step of 1.4 nm can be achieved when the TBF outside and inside Sagnac loop, respectively. The output wavelength variation of zero and the output power fluctuation of <0.1 dB are also obtained. Moreover, the transmission efficiency of the ring laser has also been performed experimentally under a 1.25, 2.5 and 10 Gb/s external modulation, respectively.     

All-Optical Clock Recovery from NRZ-DPSK Signals at Flexible Bit Rates

We propose and demonstrate all-optical clock recovery （OR） from nonreturn-to-zero differential phase-shift- keying （NRZ-DPSK） signals at different bit rates theoretically and experimentally. By pre-processing with a single optical filter, clock component can be enhanced significantly and thus clock signal can be extracted from the preprocessed signals, by cascading a OR unit with a semiconductor optical amplifier based fibre ring laser. Compared with the previous preprocessing schemes, the single filter is simple and suitable for different bit rates. The clock signals can be achieved with extinction ratio over lOdB and rms timing jitter of 0.86 and 0.9 at 10 and 20 Gb/s, respectively. The output performances related to the bandwidth and the detuning of the filter are analysed. By simply using a filter with larger bandwidth, much higher operation can be achieved easily.     

Using Fabry-Perot laser diode and reflective semiconductor optical amplifier for long reach WDM-PON system

In this investigation, we propose and investigate the simple self-injection locked Fabry-Perot laser diodes (FP-LDs) in optical line terminal (OLT); and wavelength-tunable optical network unit (ONU) using reflective optical semiconductor amplifier (RSOA) and FP-LD laser for downstream and upstream traffic in long reach (LR) wavelength division multiplexed-passive optical network (WDM-PON) respectively. The output performance of the proposed two laser sources in terms of power and side-mode suppression ratio (SMSR) has been discussed. Here, for the downstream traffic, the proposed optical transmitter can be directly modulated at 2.5 Gb/s on-off keying (OOK) format with nearly 0.4 dB power penalty at bit error rate (BER) of 10⁻⁹ through 75 km single-mode fiber (SMF) transmission. Moreover, the proposed upstream transmitter can be directly modulated at 1.25 and 2.5 Gb/s with nearly 0.5 and 1.1 dB power penalty, respectively, at the BER of 10⁻⁹.     

Multichannel silicon WDM ring filters fabricated with DUV lithography

We have fabricated 9-channel silicon wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) ring filters using 193 nm deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography and investigated the spectral properties of the ring filters by comparing the transmission spectra with and without an upper cladding. The average channel-spacing of the 9-channel WDM ring filter with a polymeric upper cladding is measured about 1.86 nm with the standard deviation of the channel-spacing about 0.34 nm. The channel crosstalk is about −30 dB, and the minimal drop loss is about 2 dB.     

All-optical RZ-OOK to RZ-BPSK conversion with multicasting based on XPM in highly nonlinear fiber

We present a detailed investigation of all-optical RZ-OOK to RZ-BPSK modulation format conversion at 10 Gb/s using cross-phase modulation in a length of highly nonlinear fiber. In particular, we examine the impact of the input RZ-OOK signal characteristics, such as duty cycle, average (peak) power, optical signal to noise ratio, and degradation from residual dispersion and differential group delay on the BER performance of the converted RZ-BPSK signal. We also present results on RZ-OOK to RZ-BPSK modulation format conversion with wavelength multicasting.     

Optical 3R regeneration of 40 Gbit/s degraded data signals

A 40 Gbit/s optical 3R regenerator is proposed and demonstrated. The 3R regenerator consists of a dual-ring injection mode-locked fiber ring laser as the clock recovery module and an electroabsorption modulator (EAM) as the decision gate. The clock recovery module extracts the optical short pulse clock with low timing jitter from degraded 40 Gbit/s optical data streams, while the decision gate restores their signal quality. A numerical model describing the cross-absorption modulation effect in a bulk EAM is developed to explore the operating conditions, such as bias voltage, pump signal power. The timing jitter tolerance for the EAM optical gate is also investigated. Significantly improvement of BER is obtained from 40 Gbit/s RZ signals which are degraded by polarization mode dispersion or chromatic dispersion.     

Optical clock recovery with dual-wavelength output from degraded RZ and NRZ signals

A novel scheme to implement clock recovery from degraded signals is proposed and demonstrated based on an optoelectronic oscillator and a dual-wavelength mode-locked fiber ring laser with distributed dispersion cavity. The scheme can obtain wavelength-tunable optical clocks at two wavelengths, which is highly desirable for composite optical logic gates, cascaded optical signal processing modules or optical signal processing modules that need synchronized pulses at multiple wavelengths. In addition, the scheme can operate in both RZ and NRZ systems. The feasibility of the method is demonstrated by an experiment, in which dual-wavelength 10-GHz optical clock with a timing jitter less than 170 fs is obtained from 10-Gb/s degraded RZ and NRZ signals. The optical clocks can be tuned from 1530 to 1565 nm.     

Tunable erbium doped fiber ring laser using fiber Bragg grating-assisted add-drop filter

A stable and low costless tunable erbium doped fiber ring laser using fiber Bragg grating-assisted add-drop filter is proposed and demonstrated. A stable laser output is obtained with a 4 nm tuning range. The power fluctuation, full-width at half maximum and SMSR are measured to be less than 0.50 dB, smaller than 0.015 nm and better than 55 dB in this tuning range.     

Switchable quadruple-wavelength erbium-doped fiber ring laser based on two-segment Lyot-Sagnac filter

We propose and demonstrate a novel switchable quadruple-wavelength erbium-doped fiber ring laser (EDFL) based on two-segment Lyot-Sagnac filter which is used as the wavelength-selective filter. Due to the deeply saturated spectral hole-burning (SHB) effect in an ordinary erbium-doped fiber, the laser realizes stable single-wavelength, dual-wavelength, triple-wavelength, and quadruple-wavelength output by controlling two polarization controllers (PCs) appropriately. The optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) is over 30 dB. The peak fluctuation is less than ~2 dB over 1.5 h at room temperature.     

Wavelength-switchable erbium-doped fiber ring laser combined with a Fabry-Perot laser diode and a sampled grating

We present a wavelength-switchable erbium-doped fiber ring laser consisting of an anti-reflection coated Fabry-Perot laser diode (FP-LD) and a sampled fiber Bragg grating (SFBG). The wavelength switching is obtained easily by the shift of FP mode with respect to the reflection peaks of the SFBG. The proposed laser apparatus not only simultaneously emits two wavelengths but also switches between the two wavelengths by adjusting the modes of FP-LD with a change of the injection current of the FP-LD as little as ∼1 mA. The proposed wavelength-switchable erbium-doped fiber ring laser exhibits high laser performance with side-mode suppression ratio (SMSR) ?50 dB.     

High birefringence and low loss circular air-holes photonic crystal fiber using complex unit cells in cladding

We propose a high birefringence and low loss index-guiding photonic crystal fiber (PCF) using the complex unit cells in cladding by the finite-element method. Results show that the birefringence and confinement loss in such PCF fiber is determined not only by the whole cladding asymmetry but also the shape of the PCF core. The maximal modal birefringence and lowest confinement loss of our proposed structures at the excitation wavelength of λ = 1550 nm can be achieved at 8.7 × 10⁻³ and 5.27 × 10⁻⁵ dB/km, respectively.