The objective of the proposed research is to investigate new and more efficient techniques in numerical evaluation and experimental measurement of phase jitter impact on more general communication systems including dispersion management, filtering, and spectral inversion schemes. There has recently been a renewed effort to develop coherent optical communication systems. In particular, differential phase-shift keying (DPSK), which does not require a local oscillator to perform decoding, has focused the attention and is perceived to be the promising candidate for future optical communication systems updates. This motivates us to exploit DPSK in wavelength-division multiplexed systems. First, modulation formats based on phase show an increased robustness to nonlinear impairments such as cross-phase modulation (XPM) and nonlinear polarization rotation, primarily because the time-dependence of optical power is deterministic and periodic. Second, coherent formats allow a higher spectral efficiency since both in-phase and quadrature dimensions of the signal space are available to encode information. Optical phase is also used in intensity-modulated direct detection systems as an extra degree of freedom, for example to provide better resistance to intrachannel four-wave mixing (FWM), or to increase spectral efficiency in duobinary modulation. Finally, phase modulation outperforms its intensity counterpart in terms of sensitivity since a 3 dB improvement can be achieved when balanced detection is used. Nevertheless, DPSK-based formats show a different behavior to noise accumulated along the propagation. Noise-induced power fluctuations are converted into phase fluctuations by the Kerr effect and become a penalty source which limits the transmission system reach. In this context, there have been intense research activities for evaluating phase uncertainties but the previous studies assume an analytically determined pulse shape and a constant-dispersion optical link which is far from reflecting the actual and future structures of transmission lines.

Long-haul optical fiber communication system is an important infrastructure to support the latest broadband communication in the world. It is important to study a technology to improve the performance of such system, and the Return-to-Zero Differential Phase Shift Keying (RZ-DPSK) modulation attracts much attention because of its improved long distance transmission performance. One important technology of the current long-haul optical fiber communication system is the dispersion map, and it is widely deployed for already installed undersea optical fiber communication system in the world. Recently, a new dispersion map that was totally different from the map used for already deployed system was proposed, and it demonstrated advantageous performance of the long-haul RZ-DPSK transmission. Even though, the reason of the performance improvement is not investigated, and it is important to clarify the physical mechanism of the performance improvement, because it will contribute to improve the system design of the long-haul optical fiber communication systems in near future. In this master thesis, the performance of the RZ-DPSK format in the long-haul transmission system is studied. Both computer simulations and experiments are conducted to confirm the effects of various factors in the long-haul RZ-DPSK transmission system. From the theoretical study, it is pointed out that the Self-Phase Modulation (SPM) played a significant role to degrade the transmission performance of the conventional map, while it does not cause so significant degradation in the new map. The effects of the SPM and the Cross-Phase Modulation (XPM) with the conventional map are investigated through the experimental study.

Long-haul optical fiber communication system is an important technology to support the latest broadband communication in the world, and there is strong competition in optical long-haul transmission to achieve high channel bit rates and large transmission capacity. Therefore, it is important to study a technology to improve the performance of such system. As we have already known, return-to-zero differential phase shift keying (RZ-DPSK) is an attractive solution to improve the long distance transmission system performance compared to the conventional on-off keying (OOK) in a 10-Gb/s system, because it has a high nonlinear tolerance. The dispersion flattened fiber (DFF) is attractive for its ability to improve the system performance. Therefore, it is possible to improve the transmission performance by a combination of the RZ-DPSK and the DFF, and one important technology of the current long-haul optical fiber communication system is the dispersion map. And it is widely deployed for already installed undersea optical fiber communication system in the world. A previous study reported that the blockless type dispersion map showed a superior performance than the block type dispersion map, and some efforts to improve the transmission performance of the block type map were conducted. Fundamental idea to improve the transmission performance of the block type map is to reduce the zero crossing points, and one idea is to shift the map toward the positive or the negative cumulative dispersion to reduce the zero crossing points within the map, but it was not so successful. The other idea is to tilt the dispersion map and it was more successful but not good enough. In this master thesis, I continued the study to improve the long-haul RZ-DPSK system performance using the block type dispersion map. One new idea of the dispersion map shifting, the split shifting, was tried, and another new idea of the dispersion map tilting, the split tilting, was examined. The performance with different repeater output power and different compensation scheme within the dispersion map was simulated by a numerical simulator .The goal is, following previous research, to clarify improved dispersion map design of the long-haul RZ-DPSK based transmission and find the effective method to improve the transmission performance. In addition, I also investigate tolerance of the effective area of the transmission fiber theoretically for the long-haul RZ-DPSK system based on the DFF.

With the essence of robustness toward fiber nonlinearity owing to the increasingly required high-speed data rate from the country to country or country to the state, many useful methods are proposed upon the long-haul optical fiber transmission, such as modulation format, dispersion map and repeater spacing, etc. Return-to-zero differential phase shift keying (RZ-DPSK) format was chosen in this master thesis because of its high tolerance toward nonlinear effect in the wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) system transmission. It has been realized that the system performance is wavelength-dependent by the combination of the WDM technology and the RZ-DPSK system with the commonly used block-type dispersion map, especially for the significant performance difference between including or excluding the self-phase-modulation (SPM) effect. Therefore, it is quite significant to investigate the unwanted fiber nonlinearity. In this master thesis, the influence relating to the cross-phase modulation (XPM) effect and the SPM effect with the conventional dispersion map after long distance transmission is the mainly concerned issue to be discussed. In this master thesis, both experiment and theoretical simulation are investigated. On the theoretical simulation part, the Q-factor of the system zero dispersion wavelength at 1543.8nm, 1550nm, 1556.2nm were degraded and their value were less than 10dB. The Q-factor was around 1.5dB less than the averaged value. However, the performance of the long-haul RZ-DPSK system based on the block-type dispersion map shows no significant performance by shifting the system zero dispersion wavelength out of the WDM signal wavelength band. On the experimental part, the impact of the XPM effect and the SPM effect on the long-haul optical fiber communication system is investigated quantitatively. For the XPM experiment, the system performance was just only 0.1 dB difference after 6000km transmission. On the contrary, for the SPM experiment, the Q-factor between best and worst performance was up to 1.3dB difference. At last, the experiment and the simulation support each other successfully in this master thesis.

Zugl.: Kaiserslautern, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2009

Zugl.: Kiel, Univ., Diss., 2008

In this dissertation we present the research findings around two important hot topics of modern and future fiber-optic communication systems: 100 Gbit/s transmission and alloptical processing of received phase-modulated signals. The findings are discussed in the same chronological order they were obtained. Each topic is summarized in two chapters that correspond to one selected journal and one conference publications. The first and second chapters are dedicated to the simulation and numerical analysis of 100 Gbit/s systems. In chapter one, we present a thorough investigation of the best 100 Gbit/s serial modulation format. Seven different modulation formats are considered and are compared in terms of tolerance to dispersion and maximum reach for a 10⁻⁹ bit error rate target. In chapter two, the behavior of chapter one’s best candidate is analyzed in a realistic environment. The influence of the existing lower data rate neighboring channels is discussed in particular. The results of these two chapters were obtained in collaboration with engineers from the Deutsche Telekom Technology Center in Darmstadt, Germany. They served as a theoretical basis for a field trial carried out by this same company. Chapter three and four focus on the use of semiconductor optical amplifiers for all-optical processing applications. Impaired phased-modulated signals are under particular interest in this study. The novelty in this work resides in the counter-propagating configuration that the semiconductor optical amplifier is operated in. In chapter three we give a detailed description of the experimental results. The complete setup is explained and the improvement in Q-factor and bit error rate for the received signal is proven. Furthermore, two novel concepts (Photonic Balancing and Saturated Asymmetric Filtering) that explain the observed improvements are developed and discussed for the first time to the best of our knowledge. Finally, chapter four aims at optimizing numerically the experimental setup for the saturated asymmetric filtering technique. The required detuned filter after the saturated semiconductor optical amplifier is optimized in terms of both off set and bandwidth.

Wavelength Division Multiplexing Passive Optical Networks (WDM PONs) offer a great solution to satisfy the increasing demand of bandwidth. In addition, it offers a higher level of data security through virtual point to point connections. A great challenge in realizing cost-effective WDM PON is the need for a transmitter at each Optical Network Unit (ONU) with a dedicated wavelength, which overloads the total cost of the system, in addition to reducing the number of available wavelengths in the system. Remodulation scheme is an ultimate solution for these problems of WDM PONs as the downstream signal itself is remodulated with upstream data which saves the need for a laser source at the ONU side. In this thesis I propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel wavelength remodulation scheme for WDM PONs that employs Differential Phase Shift Keying (DPSK) for downstream and Return to Zero DPSK (RZ-DPSK) for upstream. The use of DPSK enhanced the system with improved receiver sensitivity and RZ-DPSK improved the tolerance toward chromatic dispersion. In addition, I investigate the Backreflection (BR) penalty resulting from beat noise of BRs with upstream signal in a bidirectional WDM PON system that uses remodulation and phase modulation as a modulation format. I experimentally demonstrate the optimal conditions to operate the system and minimize the BR penalty.

Nowadays, the long-haul optical fiber communication system is one of the important way to convey the information, and there is strong competition of research in the optical long-haul transmission to achieve high channel bit rates and large transmission capacity. Therefore, it is important to study a technology to improve the performance of such system. The return-to-zero differential phase-shift keying (RZ-DPSK) and the return-to-zero differential quadrature phase-shift keying (RZ-DQPSK) have received renewed attention recently for the long-haul transmission systems, because they can improve the transmission performance of the long-haul system. Furthermore, the design of the dispersion map becomes significantly different from that of the conventional system using the intensity modulation direct detection (IM-DD) scheme. Besides, the RZ-DQPSK can transmit two bits per symbol, so it has twice the spectral efficiency of the RZ-DPSK. This study is focusing on the difference of the transmission performance of the long-haul RZ-DQPSK system due to the dispersion map using the numerical simulation.

Wavelength Division Multiplexing Passive Optical Networks (WDM PONs) offer a great solution to satisfy the increasing demand of bandwidth. In addition, it offers a higher level of data security through virtual point to point connections. A great challenge in realizing cost-effective WDM PON is the need for a transmitter at each Optical Network Unit (ONU) with a dedicated wavelength, which overloads the total cost of the system, in addition to reducing the number of available wavelengths in the system. Remodulation scheme is an ultimate solution for these problems of WDM PONs as the downstream signal itself is remodulated with upstream data which saves the need for a laser source at the ONU side. In this thesis I propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel wavelength remodulation scheme for WDM PONs that employs Differential Phase Shift Keying (DPSK) for downstream and Return to Zero DPSK (RZ-DPSK) for upstream. The use of DPSK enhanced the system with improved receiver sensitivity and RZ-DPSK improved the tolerance toward chromatic dispersion. In addition, I investigate the Backreflection (BR) penalty resulting from beat noise of BRs with upstream signal in a bidirectional WDM PON system that uses remodulation and phase modulation as a modulation format. I experimentally demonstrate the optimal conditions to operate the system and minimize the BR penalty.