298 research outputs found
Optical pulse processing towards Tb/s high-speed photonic systems
Due to the continued growth of high-bandwidth services provided by the internet, there is a requirement to operate individual line rates in excess of 100 Gb/s in next generation optical communications systems. Thus, to implement these high-speed optical networks all-optical processing techniques are necessary for pulse shaping and pulse routing. Two sub-systems (pulse generation and wavelength conversion), which exploit optical processing techniques are explored within this thesis.
Future systems will require high-quality pulse sources and this thesis develops the pulse generation technique of gain switching to provide simple and cost efficient pulse sources. The poor pulse quality typically associated with gain switching is enhanced by developing all-optical methods. The main attribute of the first pulse generation scheme presented is its wavelength tunability over 50 nm. The novelty of the second scheme lies in the ability to design a grating which has a nonlinear chirp profile exactly opposite to the gain-switched pulses. This grating used in conjunction with the gain-switched laser generates transform limited pulses suitable for 80 Gb/s systems. Furthermore the use of a vertical microcavity-based saturable absorber to suppress detrimental temporal pulse pedestals of a pulse source is investigated.
Next generation networks will require routing of data in the optical domain, which can be accomplished by high-speed all-optical wavelength converters. A semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is an ideal device to carry out wavelength conversion. In this thesis pulses following propagation through an SOA are experimentally characterised to examine the temporal and spectral dynamics due to the nonlinear response of the SOA. High-speed wavelength conversion is presented using SOA-based shifted filtering. For the first time 80 Gb/s error-free performance was obtained using cross phase modulation in conjunction with blue spectral shifted filtering. In addition an important attribute of this work experimentally examines the temporal profile and phase of the SOA-based shifted filtering wavelength converted signals. Thus the contribution and effect of ultrafast carrier dynamics associated with SOAs is presented
Bayesian Post-Processing Methods for Jitter Mitigation in Sampling
Minimum mean-square error (MMSE) estimators of signals from samples corrupted by jitter (timing noise) and additive noise are nonlinear, even when the signal parameters and additive noise have normal distributions. This paper develops a stochastic algorithm based on Gibbs sampling and slice sampling to approximate the optimal MMSE estimator in this Bayesian formulation. Simulations demonstrate that this nonlinear algorithm can improve significantly upon the linear MMSE estimator, as well as the EM algorithm approximation to the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator used in classical estimation. Effective off-chip postprocessing to mitigate jitter enables greater jitter to be tolerated, potentially reducing on-chip ADC power consumption
4-Dimensional Tracking with Ultra-Fast Silicon Detectors
The evolution of particle detectors has always pushed the technological limit in order to provide enabling technologies to researchers in all fields of science. One archetypal example is the evolution of silicon detectors, from a system with a few channels 30 years ago, to the tens of millions of independent pixels currently used to track charged particles in all major particle physics experiments. Nowadays, silicon detectors are ubiquitous not only in research laboratories but in almost every high- tech apparatus, from portable phones to hospitals. In this contribution, we present a new direction in the evolution of silicon detectors for charge particle tracking, namely the inclusion of very accurate timing information. This enhancement of the present silicon detector paradigm is enabled by the inclusion of controlled low gain in the detector response, therefore increasing the detector output signal sufficiently to make timing measurement possible. After providing a short overview of the advantage of this new technology, we present the necessary conditions that need to be met for both sensor and readout electronics in order to achieve 4-dimensional tracking. In the last section we present the experimental results, demonstrating the validity of our research path
Fast waveform metrology : generation, measurement and application of sub-picosecond electrical pulses
This thesis describes work performed at the National Physical Laboratory to improve the
electrical risetime calibration of instruments such as fast sampling oscilloscopes. The
majority of the work can be divided into four sections: development of an ultrafast
optoelectronic pulse generator; measurement of fast electrical pulses with an electrooptic
sampling system; de-embedding of transmission line and transition effects as
measured at different calibration reference planes; and calibration of an oscilloscope.
The pulse generator is a photoconductive switch based on low-temperature Gallium
Arsenide, which has a very fast carrier recombination time. Sub-picosecond electrical
pulses are produced by illuminated a planar switch with 200 fs optical pulses from a
Ti: sapphire laser system.
The pulses are measured using a sampling system with an external electro-optic probe in
close proximity to the switch. The electro-optic sampling system, with a temporal
resolution better than 500 fs, is used to measure the electrical pulses shape at various
positions along the planar transmission line. The results are compared to a pulse
propagation model for the line. The effects of different switch geometries are examined.
Although the pulse generator produces sub-picosecond pulses near to the point of
generation, the pulse is shown to broaden to 7 ps after passing along a length of
transmission line and a coplanar-coaxial transition. For a sampling oscilloscope with a
coaxial input connector, this effect is significant. Frequency-domain measurements with
a network analyser, further electro-optic sampling measurements, and the transmission line
model are combined to find the network transfer function of the transition.
Using the pulse generator, the electro-optic sampling system and the transition knowledge,
a 50 GHz sampling oscilloscope is calibrated. The determination of the instrument step
response(nominal risetime 7 ps) is improved from an earlier value of 8.5 -3.5 / +2.9 ps
to a new value of 7.4 -2.1 / +1.7 ps with the calibration techniques described
Single-photon detection techniques for underwater imaging
This Thesis investigates the potential of a single-photon depth profiling system for
imaging in highly scattering underwater environments. This scanning system measured
depth using the time-of-flight and the time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC)
technique. The system comprised a pulsed laser source, a monostatic scanning
transceiver, with a silicon single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) used for detection of
the returned optical signal.
Spectral transmittance measurements were performed on a number of different water
samples in order to characterize the water types used in the experiments. This identified
an optimum operational wavelength for each environment selected, which was in the
wavelength region of 525 - 690 nm. Then, depth profiles measurements were performed
in different scattering conditions, demonstrating high-resolution image re-construction
for targets placed at stand-off distances up to nine attenuation lengths, using average
optical power in the sub-milliwatt range. Depth and spatial resolution were investigated
in several environments, demonstrating a depth resolution in the range of 500 μm to a
few millimetres depending on the attenuation level of the medium. The angular
resolution of the system was approximately 60 μrad in water with different levels of
attenuation, illustrating that the narrow field of view helped preserve spatial resolution
in the presence of high levels of forward scattering.
Bespoke algorithms were developed for image reconstruction in order to recover depth,
intensity and reflectivity information, and to investigate shorter acquisition times,
illustrating the practicality of the approach for rapid frame rates. In addition, advanced
signal processing approaches were used to investigate the potential of multispectral
single-photon depth imaging in target discrimination and recognition, in free-space and
underwater environments. Finally, a LiDAR model was developed and validated using
experimental data. The model was used to estimate the performance of the system under
a variety of scattering conditions and system parameters
Development of high-performance quantum dot mode-locked optical frequency comb
This PhD thesis focus on the development of high-performance optical frequency combs (OFCs) generated by two-section passively mode-locked lasers (MLLs) based on novel optimised InAs quantum dot (QD) structures grown on GaAs substrates. Throughout the thesis, several important aspects are covered: the epitaxial structures, the device designs, the fabrication process, the characterisation of the fabricated laser devices and the evaluation of their performance.
To gain a deep level comprehension of the mode-locking mechanisms in two-section QD MLLs, a detailed study is presented on a series of QD MLLs with different saturable absorber (SA) to gain section length ratios (from 1: 3 to 1: 7) in either ridged-waveguide structure or tapered waveguide structure. The effect of temperature on different device configurations is experimentally examined. And the data transmission capability of the QD MLLs is systematically investigated in different scenarios.
In this thesis, an ultra-stable 25.5 GHz QD mode-locked OFC source emitted solely from the QD ground state from 20 °C to a world record 120 °C with only 0.07 GHz tone spacing variation has been demonstrated. Meanwhile, a passively QD MLL with 100 GHz fundamental repetition rate is developed for the first time, enabling 128 Gbit s−1 λ−1 PAM4 optical transmission and 64 Gbit s−1 λ−1 NRZ optical transmission through 5-km SSMF and 2-m free-space, respectively. All of the studies aim to prove that our two-section passively InAs QD MLLs can be used as simple, compact, easy-to-operate, and power-efficient multi-wavelength OFC sources for future high-speed and large-capacity optical communications
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