Timing Synchronization and Channel Estimation in Free-Space Optical OOK Communication Systems

Fast and reliable synchronization in free-space optical (FSO) communications is a crucial task that has received little attention so far. Since in these applications the data rate is much higher than in traditional radio-frequency (RF) systems, novel technological constraints may arise in the design of the synchronization algorithms, as for example the need to operate at symbol rate instead with an oversampled data stream. In this work, we consider an FSO link and investigate the problem of channel estimation, symbol timing recovery and frame detection using a known synch pattern. The modulation format is on-off keying (OOK) and the received signal is plagued by a mixture of thermal and shot noise. By applying the least-squares criterion, we derive a novel synchronization scheme that can jointly retrieve all the unknown parameters using symbol-spaced samples. Although designed without taking the noise statistics into account, the estimator performance is assessed in a realistic scenario where shot noise is present. Comparisons are made with the relevant Cramér-Rao bound for the joint estimation of the synchronization parameters and signal-dependent noise variances. Numerical simulations and complexity analysis indicate that the resulting scheme performs satisfactorily with an affordable processing load. Hence, it represents a promising solution for fast synchronization in high-speed FSO communications

Design of 10 Gb/s burst-mode receivers for high-split extended reach PONs

The continuous stream of new applications for the internet, increases the need for higher access speed in the currently deployed communication networks. Most networks in use today still consist of twisted copper wires, inherited from the telephone network. The disadvantages of reusing the existing telephone network are twofold. Firstly, the bandwidth of twisted copper wires is limited and secondly, a large number of switches and routers are needed throughout the network leading to an excessive power consumption. The hybrid fiber coax network that reuses the television distribution network is not free from these drawbacks. The bandwidth is also limited and power hungry amplifiers are needed to bridge the distance to and from the user. The future of broadband access lies in optical fiber networks. The optical fiber has a virtually unlimited bandwidth and the lower attenuation leads to less switches and amplifiers in the network, reducing the power consumption of the complete infrastructure. This dissertation describes the design of a 10 Gb/s burst-mode receiver for high-split extended reach passive optical networks (PONs). The designed receiver incorporates two very advanced features. Firstly, the burst-mode receiver locks its gain setting within 6 ns avoiding packet loss due to gain switching during data payload reception. Secondly, the burst-mode receiver detects both burst start and burst end, making it the first burst-mode receiver of its kind to operate without any time critical signal requirements from outside the burst-mode receiver. The presented work covers the chip-level architecture study and design of a 10 Gb/s burst-mode transimpedance amplifier and a 10 Gb/s post-amplifier, which are the two most critical components of a burst-mode receiver

Performance improvement of SS-WDM passive optical networks using semiconductor optical amplifiers: Modeling and experiment

Les sources incohérentes sont proposées comme alternatives aux lasers stabilisés en longueur d'onde pour réduire le coût des réseaux optiques passifs utilisant le multiplexage par longueur d'onde découpée dans le spectre (SS-WDM PONs). À cause de leur nature incohérente, ces sources génèrent au récepteur un large bruit d'intensité. Ce bruit limite l'efficacité spectrale et/ou le taux binaire pouvant être achevé. Cette thèse étudie l'utilisation des amplificateurs optique à semi-conducteur SOAs pour nettoyer le bruit d'intensité. De plus, lors de cette thèse, nous explorons les outils numériques et expérimentaux qui nous permettent d'analyser les performances des SOAs dans le cadre de systèmes de communication multi-canaux, incluant le SS-WDM. Nous présentons des modèles mathématiques pour le bruit d'intensité, ce bruit étant celui qui limite les performances des systèmes de communication utilisant des sources incohérentes. Nous discutons les dynamiques complexes des SOAs et présentons les équations qui gouvernent l'évolution des porteurs de charges dans ces amplificateurs. Nous identifions et soulignons l'effet des paramètres les plus importants, qui affectent le processus ainsi que la dynamique de nettoyage du bruit d'intensité. Nous passons en revue, les différentes techniques de nettoyage de bruit avec les SOAs, qui ont démontré les meilleurs résultats connus. De plus, nous effectuons une revue de littérature poussée pour ce qui a attrait au problème de post-filtrage lorsque le SOA est placé au transmetteur, avant la modulation. Notre première contribution pendant ce travail de recherche est de démontrer, en utilisant l'intermodulation de gain d'un SOA au récepteur pour convertir le signal incohérent en laser cohérent, une amélioration significative du taux d'erreur binaire BER. Cette méthode est spectralement efficace, d'autant plus qu'elle ne souffre point la limitation occasionnée par le post-filtrage au récepteur. En contre partie elle nécessite un ample budget de puissance qui doit assurer une saturation suffisante de l'amplificateur au récepteur. Une source laser est aussi nécessaire au récepteur. Ceci est un inconvénient, même si une telle source n'ait pas besoin d'une quelconque stabilisation. Pour contourner le problème causé par le post-filtrage quand le SOA est au transmetteur, nous proposons un nouveau récepteur pour les systèmes de communication WDM, qui permet de mieux garder le nettoyage de bruit, et ce malgré le filtrage optique au récepteur. La nouvelle méthode consiste en un détecteur balancé utilisé au récepteur: d'un bord, tous les canaux sont détectés sans distinction. De l'autre, le signal désiré est bloqué pendant que tous les autres canaux sont détectés. Avec cette méthode, il est facile de saturer l'amplificateur pour une meilleure suppression de bruit tout en évitant en grande partie la dégradation causé par le post-filtrage. Nous avons expérimentalement démontré un système WDM dense de 8 x 10 Gbps avec une source incohérente et un SOA en saturation. Une autre contribution originale de ce travail est le développement d'un outil de simulation pour les SOAs qui est numériquement plus efficace et léger que les modèles connus à ce jour. Nous avons donc développé un modèle théorique simple, pouvant être implémenté par diagramme block, dans le but de simuler les performances des hens de communications WDM. Notre modèle démontre une bonne concordance avec les résultats expérimentaux ainsi qu'une diminution de temps de calcul de l'ordre de 20 fois. Finalement, lors de la dernière partie de ces travaux, nous nous sommes occupés de mesurer, de façon précise, le temps de recouvrement du gain dans un SOA. Le temps de recouvrement des porteurs dans un SOA est un des paramètres les plus importants qui sont à l'origine du phénomène de nettoyage de bruit et qui régissent le comportement ainsi que les dynamiques de l'amplificateur. Nous avons étudié en particulier, la dépendance de ce temps de recouvrement r de la longueur d'onde. Pour le SOA utilisé lors de notre étude expérimentale, nous avons démontré que r dépendait de la longueur d'onde de façon similaire au spectre de gain. Ces mesures ont été possibles grâce au développement d'un nouveau dispositif de mesure pompe/sonde, qui permettait de mesurer le recouvrement du gain pour une pompe et une sonde à la même longueur d'onde et ayant le même état de polarisation

A NOVEL CONSTRUCTION OF VECTOR COMBINATORIAL (VC) CODE FAMILIES AND DETECTION SCHEME FOR SAC OCDMA SYSTEMS

There has been growing interests in using optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) systems for the next generation high-speed optical fiber networks. The advantage of spectral amplitude coding (SAC-OCDMA) over conventional OCDMA systems is that, when using appropriate detection technique, the multiple access interference (MAI) can totally be canceled. The motivation of this research is to develop new code families to enhance the overall performance of optical OCDMA systems. Four aspects are tackled in this research. Firstly, a comprehensive discussion takes place on all important aspects of existing codes from advantages and disadvantages point of view. Two algorithms are proposed to construct several code families namely Vector Combinatorial (VC). Secondly, a new detection technique based on exclusive-OR (XOR) logic is developed and compared to the reported detection techniques. Thirdly, a software simulation for SAC OCDMA system with the VC families using a commercial optical system, Virtual Photonic Instrument, “VPITM TransmissionMaker 7.1” is conducted. Finally, an extensive investigation to study and characterize the VC-OCDMA in local area network (LAN) is conducted. For the performance analysis, the effects of phase-induced intensity noise (PIIN), shot noise, and thermal noise are considered simultaneously. The performances of the system compared to reported systems were characterized by referring to the signal to noise ratio (SNR), the bit error rate (BER) and the effective power (Psr). Numerical results show that, an acceptable BER of 10−9 was achieved by the VC codes with 120 active users while a much better performance can be achieved when the effective received power Psr > -26 dBm. In particular, the BER can be significantly improved when the VC optimal channel spacing width is carefully selected; best performance occurs at a spacing bandwidth between 0.8 and 1 nm. The simulation results indicate that VC code has a superior performance compared to other reported codes for the same transmission quality. It is also found that for a transmitted power at 0 dBm, the BER specified by eye diagrams patterns are 10-14 and 10-5 for VC and Modified Quadratic Congruence (MQC) codes respectively

A NOVEL CONSTRUCTION OF VECTOR COMBINATORIAL (VC) CODE FAMILIES AND DETECTION SCHEME FOR SAC OCDMA SYSTEMS

There has been growing interests in using optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) systems for the next generation high-speed optical fiber networks. The advantage of spectral amplitude coding (SAC-OCDMA) over conventional OCDMA systems is that, when using appropriate detection technique, the multiple access interference (MAI) can totally be canceled. The motivation of this research is to develop new code families to enhance the overall performance of optical OCDMA systems. Four aspects are tackled in this research. Firstly, a comprehensive discussion takes place on all important aspects of existing codes from advantages and disadvantages point of view. Two algorithms are proposed to construct several code families namely Vector Combinatorial (VC). Secondly, a new detection technique based on exclusive-OR (XOR) logic is developed and compared to the reported detection techniques. Thirdly, a software simulation for SAC OCDMA system with the VC families using a commercial optical system, Virtual Photonic Instrument, “VPITM TransmissionMaker 7.1” is conducted. Finally, an extensive investigation to study and characterize the VC-OCDMA in local area network (LAN) is conducted. For the performance analysis, the effects of phase-induced intensity noise (PIIN), shot noise, and thermal noise are considered simultaneously. The performances of the system compared to reported systems were characterized by referring to the signal to noise ratio (SNR), the bit error rate (BER) and the effective power (Psr). Numerical results show that, an acceptable BER of 10−9 was achieved by the VC codes with 120 active users while a much better performance can be achieved when the effective received power Psr > -26 dBm. In particular, the BER can be significantly improved when the VC optimal channel spacing width is carefully selected; best performance occurs at a spacing bandwidth between 0.8 and 1 nm. The simulation results indicate that VC code has a superior performance compared to other reported codes for the same transmission quality. It is also found that for a transmitted power at 0 dBm, the BER specified by eye diagrams patterns are 10-14 and 10-5 for VC and Modified Quadratic Congruence (MQC) codes respectively

Cost-effective Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure for Tanziania

The research conducted an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) field survey, the results revealed that Tanzania is still lagging behind in the ICT sector due to the lack of an internationally connected terrestrial ICT infrastructure; Internet connectivity to the rest of the world is via expensive satellite links, thus leaving the majority of the population unable to access the Internet services due to its high cost. Therefore, an ICT backbone infrastructure is designed that exploits optical DWDM network technology, which un-locks bandwidth bottlenecks and provides higher capacity which will provide ICT services such as Internet, voice, videos and other multimedia interactions at an affordable cost to the majority of the people who live in the urban and rural areas of Tanzania. The research analyses and compares the performance, and system impairments, in a DWDM system at data transmission rates of 2.5 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s per wavelength channel. The simulation results show that a data transmission rate of 2.5 Gb/s can be successfully transmitted over a greater distance than 10 Gb/s with minimum system impairments. Also operating at the lower data rate delivers a good system performance for the required ICT services. A forty-channel DWDM system will provide a bandwidth of 100 Gb/s. A cost analysis demonstrates the economic worth of incorporating existing optical fibre installations into an optical DWDM network for the creation of an affordable ICT backbone infrastructure; this approach is compared with building a completely new optical fibre DWDM network or a SONET/SDH network. The results show that the ICT backbone infrastructure built with existing SSMF DWDM network technology is a good investment, in terms of profitability, even if the Internet charges are reduced to half current rates. The case for building a completely new optical fibre DWDM network or a SONET/SDH network is difficult to justify using current financial data

Optical Communication

Optical communication is very much useful in telecommunication systems, data processing and networking. It consists of a transmitter that encodes a message into an optical signal, a channel that carries the signal to its desired destination, and a receiver that reproduces the message from the received optical signal. It presents up to date results on communication systems, along with the explanations of their relevance, from leading researchers in this field. The chapters cover general concepts of optical communication, components, systems, networks, signal processing and MIMO systems. In recent years, optical components and other enhanced signal processing functions are also considered in depth for optical communications systems. The researcher has also concentrated on optical devices, networking, signal processing, and MIMO systems and other enhanced functions for optical communication. This book is targeted at research, development and design engineers from the teams in manufacturing industry, academia and telecommunication industries

Optical flow switched networks

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2009.Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-279).In the four decades since optical fiber was introduced as a communications medium, optical networking has revolutionized the telecommunications landscape. It has enabled the Internet as we know it today, and is central to the realization of Network-Centric Warfare in the defense world. Sustained exponential growth in communications bandwidth demand, however, is requiring that the nexus of innovation in optical networking continue, in order to ensure cost-effective communications in the future. In this thesis, we present Optical Flow Switching (OFS) as a key enabler of scalable future optical networks. The general idea behind OFS-agile, end-to-end, all-optical connections-is decades old, if not as old as the field of optical networking itself. However, owing to the absence of an application for it, OFS remained an underdeveloped idea-bereft of how it could be implemented, how well it would perform, and how much it would cost relative to other architectures. The contributions of this thesis are in providing partial answers to these three broad questions. With respect to implementation, we address the physical layer design of OFS in the metro-area and access, and develop sensible scheduling algorithms for OFS communication. Our performance study comprises a comparative capacity analysis for the wide-area, as well as an analytical approximation of the throughput-delay tradeoff offered by OFS for inter-MAN communication. Lastly, with regard to the economics of OFS, we employ an approximate capital expenditure model, which enables a throughput-cost comparison of OFS with other prominent candidate architectures. Our conclusions point to the fact that OFS offers significant advantage over other architectures in economic scalability.(cont.) In particular, for sufficiently heavy traffic, OFS handles large transactions at far lower cost than other optical network architectures. In light of the increasing importance of large transactions in both commercial and defense networks, we conclude that OFS may be crucial to the future viability of optical networking.by Guy E. Weichenberg.Ph.D

Topical Workshop on Electronics for Particle Physics

The purpose of the workshop was to present results and original concepts for electronics research and development relevant to particle physics experiments as well as accelerator and beam instrumentation at future facilities; to review the status of electronics for the LHC experiments; to identify and encourage common efforts for the development of electronics; and to promote information exchange and collaboration in the relevant engineering and physics communities