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Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications

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A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Optics and Lasers".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2019) | Viewed by 35189

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Zhongqi Pan

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Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Bell South Mobility/LEQSF Regents Endowed Professor in Telecommunications; Harold Callais/BORSF Endowed Professor in Electrical Engineering II, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70504-3890, USA
Interests: optical communications and networking; digital signal processing; optical sensing
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Dr. Qiang Wang

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Nokia Corporation, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA
Interests: optical communication system, digital signal processing, coherent optical transponder, open optical line system, integrated photonics
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Prof. Dr. Yang Yue

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School of Information and Communications Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China
Interests: intelligent photonics; optical communications; optical perception; optical chip
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Dr. Hao Huang

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Lumentum Operations LLC, Milpitas, CA 95035, USA
Interests: vortex beams and applications; coherent communications; digital signal processing
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Dr. Changjing Bao

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Nokia Corporation, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA
Interests: optical communication system; optical interconnect; integrated optics; nonlinear optics
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is well-known that the photon follows Bose-Einstein statistics with negligible interactions between the particles, while the electron follows the Fermi-Dirac statistics with strong interactions between particles. Due to these intrinsic properties, it is much more simple and power-efficient to process information in the eletronic domain while transmiting the information in the optical domain; this is the infrastructure for today’s Internet. In the past two decades, the advancement of electronics processing circuits followed Moore’s law and significantly outpaced the advancement of optical systems. Thus, optical communication systems face a large challenge in transporting the ever-growing Internet traffic processed by electronic systems. Industry has explored multiple degrees of freedom of the photon (time, wavelength, amplitude, phase, polarization, and space) to transmit information. These applications range from short-reach chip-to-chip interconnections to te long-haul backbone communications at the trans-Pacific distance.

This Special Issue aims to explore the latest developments in the optical communication industry: From devices, to system, to network. It will focus on state-of-the-art advances and future perspectives in commerically deployed systems. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

Coherent optical communication employing advanced modulation format.
Pluggable optical modules for datacom and telecom applications.
Photonics integrated circuit and on-board optics.
Open optical line system (for example, transport infrastructure project).
Packet optical integration, software defined networks and network function virtualization.
Short-reach, direct-detection for data center interconnections.

Prof. Zhongqi Pan
Dr. Qiang Wang
Dr. Yang Yue
Dr. Hao Huang
Dr. Changjing Bao
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Coherent communications
Fiber optics communication
Fiber optics link and subsystem
Open optical line system
CDC-F ROADM
Constellation shaping, probability shaping, geometric shaping
Quadrature amplitude modulation
Pulse amplitude modulation
Nyquist pulse shaping
Spatial division multiplexing
Short reach direct detection
Pluggable optical module
On-board optics
Digital coherent optics and analog coherent optics
Forward error correction
Packet optical integration
Photonics integrated circuit
Software defined network
Network function virtualization

Published Papers (10 papers)

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Editorial

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5 pages, 156 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Special Issue on Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications

by Zhongqi Pan, Qiang Wang, Yang Yue, Hao Huang and Changjing Bao

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(1), 411; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10010411 - 06 Jan 2020

Viewed by 1767

Abstract

In the past two decades, Internet traffic has increased by over 10,000 times by taking advantage of both efficient information processing technology in the electronic domain and efficient transmission technology in the optical domain, which are the foundation of today’s Internet infrastructure [...] [...] Read more.

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

9 pages, 5161 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Joint Probabilistic-Nyquist Pulse Shaping for an LDPC-Coded 8-PAM Signal in DWDM Data Center Communications

by Xiao Han, Mingwei Yang, Ivan B. Djordjevic, Yang Yue, Qiang Wang, Zhen Qu and Jon Anderson

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(23), 4996; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9234996 - 20 Nov 2019

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2500

Abstract

M-ary pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM) meets the requirements of data center communication because of its simplicity, but coarse entropy granularity cannot meet the dynamic bandwidth demands, and there is a large capacity gap between uniform formats and the Shannon limit. The dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) system is widely used to increase the channel capacity, but low spectral efficiency of the intensity modulation/direct detection (IM/DD) solution restricts the throughput of the modern DWDM data center networks. Probabilistic shaping distribution is a good candidate to offer us a fine entropy granularity and efficiently reduce the gap to the Shannon limit, and Nyquist pulse shaping is widely used to increase the spectral efficiency. We aim toward the joint usage of probabilistic shaping and Nyquist pulse shaping with low-density parity-check (LDPC) coding to improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of 8-PAM signal transmission. We optimized the code rate of the LDPC code and compared different Nyquist pulse shaping parameters using simulations and experiments. We achieved a 0.43 dB gain using Nyquist pulse shaping, and a 1.1 dB gain using probabilistic shaping, while the joint use of probabilistic shaping and Nyquist pulse shaping achieved a 1.27 dB gain, which offers an excellent improvement without upgrading the transceivers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications)

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9 pages, 2444 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Phase Noise Cancellation in Coherent Communication Systems Using a Radio Frequency Pilot Tone

by Tianhua Xu, Cenqin Jin, Shuqing Zhang, Gunnar Jacobsen, Sergei Popov, Mark Leeson and Tiegen Liu

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(21), 4717; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9214717 - 05 Nov 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4468

Abstract

Long-haul optical fiber communication employing digital signal processing (DSP)-based dispersion compensation can be distorted by the phenomenon of equalization-enhanced phase noise (EEPN), due to the reciprocities between the dispersion compensation unit and the local oscillator (LO) laser phase noise (LPN). The impact of EEPN scales increases with the increase of the fiber dispersion, laser linewidths, symbol rates, signal bandwidths, and the order of modulation formats. In this work, the phase noise cancellation (PNC) employing a radio frequency (RF) pilot tone in coherent optical transmission systems has been investigated. A 28-Gsym/s QPSK optical transmission system with a significant EEPN has been implemented, where the carrier phase recovery (CPR) was realized using the one-tap normalized least-mean-square (NLMS) estimation and the differential phase detection (DPD), respectively. It is shown that the RF pilot tone can entirely eliminate the LPN and efficiently suppress the EEPN when it is applied prior to the CPR. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications)

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15 pages, 3716 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Shipborne Acquisition, Tracking, and Pointing Experimental Verifications towards Satellite-to-Sea Laser Communication

by Dong He, Qiang Wang, Xiang Liu, Zhijun Song, Jianwei Zhou, Zhongke Wang, Chunyang Gao, Tong Zhang, Xiaoping Qi, Yi Tan, Ge Ren, Bo Qi, Jigang Ren, Yuan Cao and Yongmei Huang

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(18), 3940; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9183940 - 19 Sep 2019

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4209

Abstract

Acquisition, tracking, and pointing (ATP) is a key technology in free space laser communication that has a characteristically high precision. In this paper, we report the acquisition and tracking of low-Earth-orbit satellites using shipborne ATP and verify the feasibility of establishing optical links between laser communication satellites and ships in the future. In particular, we developed a shipborne ATP system for satellite-to-sea applications in laser communications. We also designed an acquisition strategy for satellite-to-sea laser communication. In addition, a method was proposed for improving shipborne ATP pointing error. We tracked some stars at sea, achieving a pointing accuracy of less than 180μrad.We then acquired and tracked some low-Earth-orbit satellites at sea, achieving a tracking accuracy of about 20μrad. The results achieved in this work experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of ATP in satellite-to-sea laser communications. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications)

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16 pages, 452 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Low-Complexity Hybrid Optical OFDM with High Spectrum Efficiency for Dimming Compatible VLC System

by Simeng Feng, Hailiang Feng, Ying Zhou and Baolong Li

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(18), 3666; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9183666 - 04 Sep 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2246

Abstract

In visible light communications (VLC), dimming control constitutes an indispensable technique to comply with various illumination necessities and with different energy consumption constraints. Therefore, a novel dimming compatible hybrid optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DCHO-OFDM) is conceived in this paper to fulfil the requirements from communications and illuminations. Explicitly, the signal branch of the unclipped asymmetrically clipped O-OFDM (ACO-OFDM) and the down/upper-clipped pulse-amplitude-modulated discrete multitone (PAM-DMT) are adaptively amalgamated in order to increase the spectrum efficiency. For the sake of precisely achieving dimming control, the chromaticity-shift-free and industry-preferred pulse width modulation (PWM) is further invoked to the hybrid signal, assisted by a time-varying biasing scheme to mitigate the non-linear distortion. As the different signal components in DCHO-OFDM are beneficially combined in an interference-orthogonal approach, the transmitted symbols are able to be readily detected upon relying on a standard OFDM receiver, as that of ACO-OFDM. Our simulations demonstrate that a high spectrum efficiency of the conceived DCHO-OFDM scheme can be achieved with less fluctuation in a wide dimming range. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications)

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13 pages, 3804 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Adaptive Compensation of Bandwidth Narrowing Effect for Coherent In-Phase Quadrature Transponder through Finite Impulse Response Filter

by Qiang Wang, Yang Yue, Jian Yao and Jon Anderson

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1950; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9091950 - 13 May 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3279

Abstract

Coherent in-phase quadrature (IQ) transponders are ubiquitous in the long-haul and the metro optical networks. During the transmission, the coherent signal experiences a bandwidth narrowing effect after passing through multiple reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs). The coherent signal also experiences a bandwidth narrowing effect when electrical or optical components of the coherent IQ transponder experience aging. A dynamic method to compensate the bandwidth narrowing effect is thus required. In the coherent optical receiver, signal bandwidth is estimated from the raw analog-to-digital converter (ADC) outputs. By adaptively adjusting the tap coefficients of the finite impulse response (FIR) filter, simple post-ADC FIR filters can increase the resiliency of the coherent signal to the bandwidth narrowing effect. The influence of chromatic dispersion, polarization mode dispersion, and polarization dependent loss are studied comprehensively. Furthermore, the bandwidth information of the transmitted analog signal is fed back to the coherent optical transmitter for signal optimization, and the transmitter-side FIR filter thus changes accordingly. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications)

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13 pages, 3995 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Two-Dimensional Constellation Shaping in Fiber-Optic Communications

by Zhen Qu, Ivan B. Djordjevic and Jon Anderson

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1889; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9091889 - 08 May 2019

Cited by 26 | Viewed by 5783

Abstract

Constellation shaping has been widely used in optical communication systems. We review recent advances in two-dimensional constellation shaping technologies for fiber-optic communications. The system architectures that are discussed include probabilistic shaping, geometric shaping, and hybrid probabilistic-geometric shaping solutions. The performances of the three [...] Read more.

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications)

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23 pages, 5909 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Power and Signal-to-Noise Ratio Optimization in Mesh-Based Hybrid Optical Network-on-Chip Using Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

by Jun Yeong Jang, Min Su Kim, Chang-Lin Li and Tae Hee Han

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(6), 1251; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9061251 - 25 Mar 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3898

Abstract

To address the performance bottleneck in metal-based interconnects, hybrid optical network-on-chip (HONoC) has emerged as a new alternative. However, as the size of the HONoC grows, insertion loss and crosstalk noise increase, leading to excessive laser source output power and performance degradation. Therefore, we propose a low-power scalable HONoC architecture by incorporating semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). An SOA placement algorithm is developed considering insertion loss and crosstalk noise. Furthermore, we establish a worst-case crosstalk noise model of SOA-enabled HONoC and induce optimized SOA gains with respect to power consumption and performance, respectively. Extensive simulations for worst-case signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and power consumption are conducted under various traffic patterns and different network sizes. Simulation results show that the proposed SOA-enabled HONoC architecture and the associated algorithm help sustain the performance as network size increases without additional laser source power. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications)

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7 pages, 1411 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Novel Coding Based Dimming Scheme with Constant Transmission Efficiency in VLC Systems

by Yu Zuo and Jian Zhang

Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(4), 803; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9040803 - 25 Feb 2019

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2557

Abstract

Visible light communication (VLC) has attracted tremendous attention due to two functions: communication and illumination. Both reliable data transmission and lighting quality need to be considered when the transmitted signal is designed. To achieve the desired levels of illumination, dimming control is an essential technology applied in VLC systems. In this paper, we propose a block coding-based dimming scheme to construct the codeword set, where dimming control can be achieved by changing the ratio of two levels (ON and OFF) based on on-off keying (OOK) modulation. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can maintain good error performance with constant transmission efficiency under various dimming levels. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications)

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9 pages, 2999 KiB

Open AccessArticle

400GbE Technology Demonstration Using CFP8 Pluggable Modules

by Yang Yue, Qiang Wang, Jian Yao, Jason O’Neil, Daniel Pudvay and Jon Anderson

Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(11), 2055; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8112055 - 25 Oct 2018

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3425

Abstract

In this article, we first review the current status of 400GBASE client-side optics standards and multi-source agreements (MSAs). We then compare different form factors for 400GE modules, including CFP8, OSFP and QSFP-DD. The essential techniques to implement 400GE, such as pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4), forward error correction (FEC) and a continuous time-domain linear equalizer (CTLE), are discussed. A 400GE physical interface card (PIC) in Juniper’s PTX5000 platform has been developed, conforming to the latest IEEE802.3bs standard. To validate the PIC’s performance, a commercial optical network tester (ONT) and the PIC are optically interconnected through two CFP8-LR8 modules. The CFP8-LR8 module utilizes eight optical wavelengths through coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM). Each wavelength carries 50 Gb/s PAM4 signal. The signal transmits through 10 km of single mode fiber (SMF). The ONT generates framed 400GE signal and sends it to the PIC through the first CFP8 module. The PIC recovers the signal, performs an internal loopback, and sends 400GE signal back to the ONT through the second CFP8 module. The optical spectrum, eye diagram, receiver sensitivity, long time soaking results, and internal digital diagnosis monitoring (DDM) result are fully characterized. The pre-FEC bit error rate (BER) is well below the KP4 FEC threshold of 2.2 × 10⁻⁴. After KP4 FEC, error-free performance over 30 km of SMF is achieved. In this way, we demonstrate both the interoperation between the PIC and the ONT, as well as the interoperation between the two CFP8 modules. This demonstration represents the successful implementation of the 400GE interface in the core IP/MPLS router. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications)

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