Microwave Photonic Applications - From Chip Level to System Level

Die Vermischung von Mikrowellen- und optischen Technologien – Mikrowellenphotonik – ist ein neu aufkommendes Feld mit hohem Potential. Durch die Nutzung der Vorzüge beider Welten hat die Mikrowellenphotonik viele Anwendungsfälle und ist gerade erst am Beginn ihrer Erfolgsgeschichte. Der Weg für neue Konzepte, neue Komponenten und neue Anwendungen wird dadurch geebnet, dass ein höherer Grad an Integration sowie neue Technologien wie Silicon Photonics verfügbar sind. In diesem Werk werden zuerst die notwendigen grundlegenden Basiskomponenten – optische Quelle, elektro-optische Wandlung, Übertragungsmedium und opto-elektrische Wandlung – eingeführt. Mithilfe spezifischer Anwendungsbeispiele, die von Chipebene bis hin zur Systemebene reichen, wird der elektrooptische Codesign-Prozess veranschaulicht. Schließlich werden zukünftige Ausrichtungen wie die Unterstützung von elektrischen Trägern im Millimeterwellen- und THz-Bereich sowie Realisierungsoptionen in integrierter Optik und Nanophotonik diskutiert.The hybridization between microwave and optical technologies – microwave photonics – is an emerging field with high potential. Benefitting from the best of both worlds, microwave photonics has many use cases and is just at the beginning of its success story. The availability of a higher degree of integration and new technologies such as silicon photonics paves the way for new concepts, new components and new applications. In this work, first, the necessary basic building blocks – optical source, electro-optical conversion, transmission medium and opto-electrical conversion – are introduced. With the help of specific application examples ranging from chip level to system level, the electro-optical co-design process for microwave photonic systems is illustrated. Finally, future directions such as the support of electrical carriers in the millimeter wave and THz range and realization options in integrated optics and nanophotonics are discussed

Signal processing with optical delay line filters for high bit rate transmission systems

In den letzten Jahrzehnten ist das globale Kommunikationssystem in einem immer größerem Maße ein integraler Bestandteil des täglichen Lebens geworden. Optische Kommunikationssysteme sind die technologische Basis für diese Entwicklung. Nur Fasern können die riesige benötigte Bandbreite bereitstellen. Während für die ersten optischen Übertragungssysteme die Faser als "flacher" Kanal betrachtet werden konnte, machen Wellenlängenmultiplex und steigende Übertragungsraten die Einbeziehung von immer mehr physikalischen Effekten notwendig. Bei einer Erhöhung der Kanaldatenrate auf 40 Gbit/s und mehr ist die statische Kompensation von chromatischer Dispersion nicht mehr ausreichend. Die intrinsische Toleranz der Modulationsformate gegenüber Dispersion nimmt quadratisch mit der Symbolrate ab. Daher können beispielsweise durch Umwelteinflüsse hervorgerufene Dispersionsschwankungen die Dispersionstoleranz der Modulationsformate überschreiten. Dies macht eine adaptive Dispersionskompensation notwendig, was gleichzeitig auch Dispersionsmonitoring erfordert, um den adaptiven Kompensator steuern zu können. Vorhandene Links können mit Restdispersionskompensatoren ausgestattet werden, um sie für Hochgeschwindigkeitsübertragungen zu ertüchtigen. Optische Kompensationstechniken sind unabhängig von der Kanaldatenrate. Daher wird eine Erhöhung der Datenrate problemlos unterstützt. Optische Kompensatoren können WDM-fähig gebaut werden, um mehrere Kanäle auf einmal zu entzerren. Das Buch beschäftigt sich mit optischen Delay-Line-Filtern als eine Klasse von optischen Kompensatoren. Die Filtersynthese von solchen Delay-Line-Filtern wird behandelt. Der Zusammenhang zwischen optischen Filtern und digitalen FIR-Filtern mit komplexen Koeffizienten im Zusammenhang mit kohärenter Detektion wird aufgezeigt. Iterative und analytische Methoden, die die Koeffizienten für dispersions- und dispersions-slope-kompensierende Filter produzieren, werden untersucht. Genauso wichtig wie die Kompensation von Dispersion ist die Schätzung der Dispersion eines Signals. Mit Delay-Line-Filtern können die Restseitenbänder eines Signals genutzt werden, um die Dispersion zu messen. Alternativ kann nichtlineare Detektion angewandt werden, um die Pulsverbreiterung, die hauptsächlich von der Dispersion herrührt, zu schätzen. Mit gemeinsamer Dispersionskompensation und Dispersionsmonitoring können Dispersionskompensatoren auf die Signalverzerrungen eingestellt werden. Spezielle Eigenschaften der Filter zusammen mit der analytischen Beschreibung können genutzt werden, um schnelle und zuverlässige Steueralgorithmen zur Filtereinstellung bereitzustellen. Schließlich wurden Prototypen derartiger faseroptischen Kompensatoren von chromatischer Dispersion und Dispersions-Slope hergestellt und charakterisiert. Die Einheiten und ihr Systemverhalten wird gezeigt und diskutiert.Over the course of the past decades, the global communication system has become a central part of people's everyday lives. Optical communication systems are the technological basis for this development. Only fibers can provide the huge bandwidth that is required. Where the fiber could be regarded as a flat channel for the first optical transmission systems wavelength multiplexing and increasing line rates made it necessary to take more and more physical effects into account. When the line rates are increased to 40 Gbit/s and higher static chromatic dispersion compensation is not enough. The modulation format's intrinsic tolerance for dispersion decreases quadratically with the symbol rate. Thus, environmentally induced chromatic dispersion fluctuations may exceed the dispersion tolerance of the modulation formats. This makes an adaptive dispersion compensation necessary implying also the need for a monitoring scheme to steer the adaptive compensator. Legacy links that are CD-compensated by DCFs can be upgraded with residual dispersion compensators to make them ready for high speed transmission. Optical compensation is independent from the line rate. Hence, increasing the data rates is inherently supported. Optical compensators can be built WDM ready compensating multiple channels at once. The book deals with optical delay line filters as one class of optical compensators. The filter synthesis of such delay line filters is addressed. The connection between optical filters and digital FIR filters with complex coefficients that are used in conjunction with coherent detection could be shown. Iterative and analytical methods that produce the coefficients for dispersion (and also dispersion slope) compensating filters are researched. As important as the compensation of dispersion is the estimation of the dispersion of a signal. Using delay line filters, the vestigial sidebands of a signal can be used to measure the dispersion. Alternatively, nonlinear detection can be used to estimate the pulse broadening which is caused mainly by dispersion. With dispersion compensation and dispersion monitoring, dispersion compensators can be adapted to the signal's impairment. Special properties of the filter in conjunction with an analytical description can be used to provide a fast and reliable control algorithm for setting the filter to a given dispersion and centering it on a signal. Finally, prototypes of such fiber optic chromatic dispersion and dispersion slope compensation filters were manufactured and characterized. The device and system characterization of the prototypes is presented and discussed

Pressure Calculation in Polar and Charged Systems using Ewald Summation: Results for the Extended Simple Point Charge Model of Water

Ewald summation and physically equivalent methods such as particle-mesh Ewald, kubic-harmonic expansions, or Lekner sums are commonly used to calculate long-range electrostatic interactions in computer simulations of polar and charged substances. The calculation of pressures in such systems is investigated. We find that the virial and thermodynamic pressures differ because of the explicit volume dependence of the effective, resummed Ewald potential. The thermodynamic pressure, obtained from the volume derivative of the Helmholtz free energy, can be expressed easily for both ionic and rigid molecular systems. For a system of rigid molecules, the electrostatic energy and the forces at the atom positions are required, both of which are readily available in molecular dynamics codes. We then calculate the virial and thermodynamic pressures for the extended simple point charge (SPC/E) water model at standard conditions. We find that the thermodynamic pressure exhibits considerably less system size dependence than the virial pressure. From an analysis of the cross correlation between the virial and thermodynamic pressure, we conclude that the thermodynamic pressure should be used to drive volume fluctuations in constant-pressure simulations.Comment: RevTeX, 19 pages, 2 EPS figures; in press: Journal of Chemical Physics, 15-August-199

Classification using a two-qubit quantum chip

Quantum computing has great potential for advancing machine learning algorithms beyond classical reach. Even though full-fledged universal quantum computers do not exist yet, its expected benefits for machine learning can already be shown using simulators and already available quantum hardware. In this work, we focus on distance-based classification using actual early stage quantum hardware. We extend earlier work and present a distance-based classification algorithm using only two qubits. We show that the results are similar to the theoretically expected results

Optimizing the Decoy-State BB84 QKD Protocol Parameters

The performance of a QKD implementation is determined by the tightness of the underlying security analysis. In particular, the security analyses determines the key-rate, i.e., the amount of cryptographic key material that can be distributed per time unit. Nowadays, the security analyses of various QKD protocols are well understood. It is known that optimal protocol parameters, such as the number of decoy states and their intensities, can be found by solving a nonlinear optimization problem. The complexity of this optimization problem is typically handled by making an number of heuristic assumptions. For instance, the number of decoy states is restricted to only one or two, with one of the decoy intensities set to a fixed value, and vacuum states are ignored as they are assumed to contribute only marginally to the secure key-rate. These assumptions simplify the optimization problem and reduce the size of search space significantly. However, they also cause the security analysis to be non-tight, and thereby result in sub-optimal performance. In this work, we follow a more rigorous approach using both linear and non-linear programs describing the optimization problem. Our approach, focusing on the Decoy-State BB84 protocol, allows heuristic assumptions to be omitted, and therefore results in a tighter security analysis with better protocol parameters. We show an improved performance for the Decoy-State BB84 QKD protocol, demonstrating that the heuristic assumptions typically made are too restrictive. Moreover, our improved optimization frameworks shows that the complexity of the performance optimization problem can also be handled without making heuristic assumptions, even with limited computational resources available

Classification of Hybrid Quantum-Classical Computing

As quantum computers mature, the applicability in practice becomes more important. Many uses of quantum computers will be hybrid, with classical computers still playing an important role in operating and using the quantum computer. The term hybrid is however diffuse and multi-interpretable. In this work we define two classes of hybrid quantum-classical computing: vertical and horizontal. The first is application-agnostic and concerns using quantum computers. The second is application-specific and concerns running an algorithm. For both, we give a further subdivision in different types of hybrid quantum-classical computing and we coin terms for them

Directly Printable Flexible Strain Sensors for Bending and Contact Feedback of Soft Actuators

This paper presents a fully printable sensorized bending actuator that can be calibrated to provide reliable bending feedback and simple contact detection. A soft bending actuator following a pleated morphology, as well as a flexible resistive strain sensor, were directly 3D printed using easily accessible FDM printer hardware with a dual-extrusion tool head. The flexible sensor was directly welded to the bending actuator’s body and systematically tested to characterize and evaluate its response under variable input pressure. A signal conditioning circuit was developed to enhance the quality of the sensory feedback, and flexible conductive threads were used for wiring. The sensorized actuator’s response was then calibrated using a vision system to convert the sensory readings to real bending angle values. The empirical relationship was derived using linear regression and validated at untrained input conditions to evaluate its accuracy. Furthermore, the sensorized actuator was tested in a constrained setup that prevents bending, to evaluate the potential of using the same sensor for simple contact detection by comparing the constrained and free-bending responses at the same input pressures. The results of this work demonstrated how a dual-extrusion FDM printing process can be tuned to directly print highly customizable flexible strain sensors that were able to provide reliable bending feedback and basic contact detection. The addition of such sensing capability to bending actuators enhances their functionality and reliability for applications such as controlled soft grasping, flexible wearables, and haptic devices