With the explosive growth of bandwidth requirement in optical fiber communication
networks, optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) has witnessed tremendous
achievements as one of the promising technologies for optical access networks over the
past decades. In an OCDMA system, optical code processing is one of the key
techniques. Rapid optical code reconfiguration can improve flexibility and security of
the OCDMA system. This thesis focuses on advanced optical modulations and
en/decoding techniques for applications in fast reconfigurable OCDMA systems and
secure optical communications.
A novel time domain spectral phase encoding (SPE) scheme which can rapidly
reconfigure the optical code and is compatible with conventional spectral domain phase
en/decoding by using a pair of dispersive devices and a high speed phase modulator is
proposed. Based on this scheme, a novel advanced modulation technique that can
simultaneously generate both the optical code and the differential-phase-shift-keying
(DPSK) data using a single phase modulator is experimentally demonstrated. A
symmetric time domain spectral phase encoding and decoding (SPE/SPD) scheme using
a similar setup for both the transmitter and receiver is further proposed, based on which
a bit-by-bit optical code scrambling and DPSK data modulation technique for secure
optical communications has been successfully demonstrated. By combining optical
encoding and optical steganography, a novel approach for secure transmission of time
domain spectral phase encoded on-off-keying (OOK)/DPSK-OCDMA signal over
public wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) network has also been proposed and
demonstrated.
To enable high speed operation of the time domain SPE/SPD scheme and enhance the
system security, a rapid programmable, code-length variable bit-by-bit optical code
shifting technique is proposed. Based on this technique, security improvements for
OOK/DPSK OCDMA systems at data rates of 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s using reconfigurable
optical codes of up to 1024-chip have been achieved.
Finally, a novel tunable two-dimensional coherent optical en/decoder which can
simultaneously perform wavelength hopping and spectral phase encoding based on
coupled micro-ring resonator is proposed and theoretically investigated. The techniques
included in this thesis could be potentially used for future fast reconfigurable and secure
optical code based communication systems
