Advanced Technique and Future Perspective for Next Generation Optical Fiber Communications

Optical fiber communication industry has gained unprecedented opportunities and achieved rapid progress in recent years. However, with the increase of data transmission volume and the enhancement of transmission demand, the optical communication field still needs to be upgraded to better meet the challenges in the future development. Artificial intelligence technology in optical communication and optical network is still in its infancy, but the existing achievements show great application potential. In the future, with the further development of artificial intelligence technology, AI algorithms combining channel characteristics and physical properties will shine in optical communication. This reprint introduces some recent advances in optical fiber communication and optical network, and provides alternative directions for the development of the next generation optical fiber communication technology

Investigation of methods for data communication and power delivery through metals

PhD ThesisThe retrieval of data from a sensor, enclosed by a metallic structure, such as a naval vessel, pipeline or nuclear flask is often very challenging. To maintain structural integrity it is not desirable to penetrate the wall of the structure, preventing any hard-wired solution. Furthermore, the conductive nature of the structure prevents the use of radio communications. Applications involving sealed containers also have a requirement for power delivery, as the periodic changing of batteries is not possible. Ultrasound has previously been identified as an attractive approach but there are two key challenges: efficient/reliable ultrasonic transduction and a method of overcoming the inherent multipath distortion resulting from boundary reflections. Previous studies have utilised piezoelectric contact transducers, however, they are impractical due to their reliance on coupling, i.e. the bond between the transducer and the metal surface, which leads to concerns over long term reliability. A non-contact transducer overcomes this key drawback, thus highlighting the electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) as a favourable alternative. This thesis presents the design and testing of an EMAT with appropriate characteristics for through-metal data communications. A low cost, low power data transmission scheme is presented for overcoming acoustic multipath based on pulse position modulation (PPM). Due to the necessary guard time, the data rate is limited to 50kbps. A second solution is presented employing continuous wave, Quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation, allowing data rates in excess of 1Mbps to be achieved. Equalisation is required to avoid intersymbol interference (ISI) and a decision feedback equaliser (DFE) is shown to be adept at mitigating this effect. The relatively low efficiency of an EMAT makes it unsuitable for power delivery, consequently, an alternative non-contact approach, utilising inductive coupling, is explored. Power transfer efficiency of ≈ 4% is shown to be achievable through 20mm thick stainless steel.ICS department of BAE Systems Submarine Solutions, EPSR

Pulse position modulation coding schemes for optical inter-satellite links in free space

The rapid and significant development of communications links between satellites has made it possible to use various applications such as relay voice, video, multimedia, etc. As a result, a great deal of research has been done in this field during the last few years to reduce power consumption and increase transmission reliability. This thesis is concerned with an analysis of intersatellite links in free space, with optical links using laser sources being considered in particular. It includes a literature survey and a thorough theoretical investigation into designing the model of the link in free space. This thesis describes the novel technique of designing the optical receiver that consists of PIN photodiode as a photodetector, Semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and a 3rd order Butterworth filter with central decision detection. In addition, it discusses the use of several different coding schemes for use in such links: multiple pulse position modulation (MPPM); digital pulse position modulation (DPPM); Dicode pulse position modulation (Dicode PPM). This novel technique of an optical receiver is investigated and new work is presented in order to examine the noise performance of this optical receiver and hence determine its sensitivity and the number of photons received for a specified error rate. Further new work is carried out to compare these coding schemes in terms of error weightings and coding efficiency through showing how the PCM error rate is affected by false alarm and erasure errors for MPPM, DPPM and Dicode PPM coding 3, 4, 5 and 6 bits of PCM. An original maximum likelihood sequence detector (MLSD) is presented in this thesis in order to perform these comparisons. In addition, computer simulations models (using MCAD) are performed to compare these three coding schemes operating with 3, 4, 5 and 6 bits of PCM in terms of sensitivity and bandwidth efficiency. These comparisons show that MPPM coding 3, 4, 5 and 6 bits of PCM is the appropriate coding scheme to be used in optical inter-satellite links in free space and PCM data rates of 1 Gbit/s.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Application of wavelets and artificial neural network for indoor optical wireless communication systems

Abstract This study investigates the use of error control code, discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and artificial neural network (ANN) to improve the link performance of an indoor optical wireless communication in a physical channel. The key constraints that barricade the realization of unlimited bandwidth in optical wavelengths are the eye-safety issue, the ambient light interference and the multipath induced intersymbol interference (ISI). Eye-safety limits the maximum average transmitted optical power. The rational solution is to use power efficient modulation techniques. Further reduction in transmitted power can be achieved using error control coding. A mathematical analysis of retransmission scheme is investigated for variable length modulation techniques and verified using computer simulations. Though the retransmission scheme is simple to implement, the shortfall in terms of reduced throughput will limit higher code gain. Due to practical limitation, the block code cannot be applied to the variable length modulation techniques and hence the convolutional code is the only possible option. The upper bound for slot error probability of the convolutional coded dual header pulse interval modulation (DH-PIM) and digital pulse interval modulation (DPIM) schemes are calculated and verified using simulations. The power penalty due to fluorescent light interference (FL I) is very high in indoor optical channel making the optical link practically infeasible. A denoising method based on a DWT to remove the FLI from the received signal is devised. The received signal is first decomposed into different DWT levels; the FLI is then removed from the signal before reconstructing the signal. A significant reduction in the power penalty is observed using DWT. Comparative study of DWT based denoising scheme with that of the high pass filter (HPF) show that DWT not only can match the best performance obtain using a HPF, but also offers a reduced complexity and design simplicity. The high power penalty due to multipath induced ISI makes a diffuse optical link practically infeasible at higher data rates. An ANN based linear and DF architectures are investigated to compensation the ISI. Unlike the unequalized cases, the equalized schemes don‘t show infinite power penalty and a significant performance improvement is observed for all modulation schemes. The comparative studies substantiate that ANN based equalizers match the performance of the traditional equalizers for all channel conditions with a reduced training data sequence. The study of the combined effect of the FLI and ISI shows that DWT-ANN based receiver perform equally well in the present of both interference. Adaptive decoding of error control code can offer flexibility of selecting the best possible encoder in a given environment. A suboptimal ?soft‘ sliding block convolutional decoder based on the ANN and a 1/2 rate convolutional code with a constraint length is investigated. Results show that the ANN decoder can match the performance of optimal Viterbi decoder for hard decision decoding but with slightly inferior performance compared to soft decision decoding. This provides a foundation for further investigation of the ANN decoder for convolutional code with higher constraint length values. Finally, the proposed DWT-ANN receiver is practically realized in digital signal processing (DSP) board. The output from the DSP board is compared with the computer simulations and found that the difference is marginal. However, the difference in results doesn‘t affect the overall error probability and identical error probability is obtained for DSP output and computer simulations

A Methodology for Implementing RF BiSTs in Production Testing to Replace RF Conventional Tests

Production testing of Radio Frequency (RF) devices is challenging due to the complex nature of the tests that have to be performed to verify functionality. In this dissertation a methodology to replace the complex and expensive RF functional tests with defect-oriented Built-in Self Tests (BiSTs) is detailed. If a design has sufficient margin to RF specifications then RF tests can be replaced with structural tests using a new data analysis technique called quadrant analysis, which is presented. Data from the analysis of over one million production units of said System on Chip (SoC) is presented along with the results of the analysis. The BiST techniques that have been used are discussed and a Texas Instruments 65 nm RF SoC with a Bluetooth and a FM core was used as a case study. The defect models that were used to develop the BiSTs are discussed as well. The scenario in which a design does not have sufficient margin to specification is also discussed. The data analysis method required in such a case is a regression analysis and the data from such an analysis is shown. The results prove that it is possible to replace expensive RF conventional tests with structural tests and that modern RFCMOS process technology and advances in design like the Digital Radio Processor (DRPTM) technology enable this. The Defective Parts Per Million (DPPM) impact of making this replacement is 27 units and is acceptable for RFCMOS high volume products. Finally, data showing test cost reduction of about 38% that resulted from the elimination of RF conventional tests is presented

Hybrid fibre and free-space optical solutions in optical access networks

This thesis evaluates the potentials of hybrid fibre and free space optical (FSO) communications access networks in providing a possible solution to an all optical access network. In such network architectures, the FSO link can extend the system to areas where an optical fibre link is not feasible, and/or provide limited mobility for indoor coverage. The performance of hybrid fibre and FSO (HFFSO) networks based on digital pulse position modulation (DPPM), for both the indoor and outdoor environments of the optical access network, are compared with the performance of such a network that is based on conventional on-off keying non-return-to-zero (OOK NRZ) modulation using results obtained through computational and analytical modelling. Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and/or code division multiple access (CDMA) are incorporated into the network for high speed transmission and/or network scalability. The impacts of optical scintillation, beam spreading and coupling losses, multiple access interference (MAI), linear optical crosstalk and amplified spontaneous emission noise (ASE) on the performance of hybrid fibre and FSO (HFFSO) access networks are analysed, using performance evaluation methods based on simple Gaussian approximation (GA) and more complex techniques based on moment generating function (MGF), including the Chernoff bound (CB), modified Chernoff bound (MCB) and saddlepoint approximation (SPA). Results in the form of bit error rate (BER), power penalty, required optical power and outage probability are presented, and both the CB and MCB, which are upper bounds, are suggested as safer methods of assessing the performance of practical systems. The possibility of using a CDMA-based HFFSO network to provide high speed optical transmission coverage in an indoor environment is investigated. The results show a reduction in transmit power of mobile devices of about 9 – 20 dB (depending on number of active users) when an optical amplifier is used in the system compared to a non-amplified system, and up to 2.8 dB improvement over OOK NRZ receiver sensitivity is provided by a DPPM system using integrate and compare circuitry for maximum likelihood detection, and at coding level of two, for minimum bandwidth utilization. Outdoor HFFSO networks using only WDM, and incorporating CDMA with WDM, are also investigated. In the presence of atmospheric scintillations, an OOK system is required (for optimum performance) to continuously adapt its decision threshold to the fluctuating instantaneous irradiance. This challenge is overcome by using the maximum likelihood detection DPPM system, and necessitated the derivation of an interchannel crosstalk model for WDM DPPM systems. It is found that optical scintillation worsens the effect of interchannel crosstalk in outdoor HFFSO WDM systems, and results in error floors particularly in the upstream transmission, which are raised when CDMA is incorporated into the system, because of MAI. In both outdoor HFFSO networks (with WDM only and with WDM incorporating CDMA), the optical amplifier is found necessary in achieving acceptable BER, and with a feeder fibre of 20 km and distributive FSO link length of 1500 m, high speed broadband services can be provided to users at safe transmit power at all turbulence levels in clear air atmosphere

Adaptation techniques in optical wireless communications

The need for high-speed local area networks to meet the recent developments in multimedia and video transmission applications has recently focused interest on optical wireless communication. Optical wireless systems boast some advantages over radio frequency (RF) systems, including a large unregulated spectrum, freedom from fading, confidentiality and immunity against interference from electrical devices. They can satisfy the dual need for mobility and broadband networking. However, optical wireless links are not without flaws. They are affected by background noise (artificial and natural light sources) and suffer from multipath dispersion. The former can degrade the signal-to-noise ratio, while the latter restricts the maximum transmission rate available. The aim of this thesis is to investigate a number of techniques to overcome these drawbacks and design a robust high-speed indoor optical wireless system with full mobility. Beam delay and power adaptation in a multi-spot diffusing system is proposed in order to increase the received optical signal, reduce the delay spread and enable the system to operate at higher data rates. The thesis proposes employing angle diversity receivers and imaging diversity receivers as in order to reduce background noise components. Moreover, the work introduces and designs a high-speed fully adaptive optical wireless system that employs beam delay, angle and power adaptation in a multi-spot diffusing configuration and investigates the robustness of the link design in a realistic indoor office. Furthermore, a new adaptive optical wireless system based on a finite vocabulary of stored holograms is introduced. This method can effectively optimise the spots’ locations and reduce the design complexity of an adaptive optical wireless system. A fast adaptation approach based on a divide-andconquer methodology is proposed and integrated with the system to reduce the time required to identify the optimum hologram. The trade-off between complexity and performance enhancement of the adaptive finite holograms methods compared with the original beam power and angle adaptation is investigated

Genetic algorithm optimisation methods applied to the indoor optical wireless communications channel

This thesis details an investigation into the application of genetic algorithms to indoor optical wireless communication systems. The principle aims are to show how it is possible for a genetic algorithm to control the received power distribution within multiple dynamic environments, such that a single receiver design can be employed lowering system costs. This kind of approach is not typical within the research currently being undertaken, where normally, the emphasis on system performance has always been linked with improvements to the receiver design. Within this thesis, a custom built simulator has been developed with the ability to determine the channel characteristics at all locations with the system deployment environment, for multiple configurations including user movement and user alignment variability. Based on these results an investigation began into the structure of the genetic algorithm, testing 192 different ones in total. After evaluation of each one of the algorithms and their performance merits, 2 genetic algorithms remained and are proposed for use. These 2 algorithms were shown capable of reducing the receiver power deviation by up to 26%, and forming, whilst the user perturbs the channel, through movement and variable alignment, a consistent power distribution to within 12% of the optimised case. The final part of the work, extends the use of the genetic algorithm to not only try to optimise the received power deviation, but also the received signal to noise ratio deviation. It was shown that the genetic algorithm is capable of reducing the deviation by around 12% in an empty environment and maintain this optimised case to within 10% when the user perturbs the channel