Σχεδόν όλα τα σύγχρονα τηλεπικοινωνιακά συστήματα, τα οποία προορίζονται για αποστολή δεδομένων σε υψηλούς ρυθμούς, έχουν υιοθετήσει κώδικες διόρθωσης λαθών για την αύξηση της αξιοπιστίας και τη μείωση της απαιτούμενης ισχύος εκπομπής τους. Μια κατηγορία κωδίκων, και μάλιστα με εξαιρετικές επιδόσεις, είναι η οικογένεια των LPDC κωδίκων (Low-Density-Parity-Check codes). Οι κώδικες αυτοί είναι γραμμικοί block κώδικες με απόδοση πολύ κοντά στο όριο του Shannon. Επιπλέον, ο εύκολος παραλληλισμός της διαδικασίας αποκωδικοποίησής τους, τους καθιστά κατάλληλους για υλοποίηση σε υλικό. Στην παρούσα διπλωματική μελετούμε τα ιδιαίτερα χαρακτηριστικά και τις παραμέτρους των κωδίκων αυτών, ώστε να κατανοήσουμε την εκπληκτική διορθωτική ικανότητά τους. Στη συνέχεια, επιλέγουμε μια ειδική κατηγορία κωδίκων LDPC, της οποίας οι πίνακες ελέγχου ισοτιμίας έχουν δημιουργηθεί ώστε να διευκολύνουν την υλοποίησή τους, και προχωρούμε στο σχεδιασμό αυτής σε υλικό. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, υλοποιούμε σε VHDL έναν αποκωδικοποιητή σύμφωνα με τον rate ½ και block_lenght 576 bits πίνακα του προτύπου WiMax 802.16e, με στόχο κυρίως την επίτευξη πολύ υψηλού throughput. Στο χρονοπρογραμματισμό της μετάδοσης των μηνυμάτων μεταξύ των κόμβων του κυκλώματος χρησιμοποιούμε το two-phase scheduling και προτείνουμε δύο τροποποιήσεις αυτού για την επιτάχυνση της διαδικασίας αποκωδικοποίησης, οι οποίες καταλήγουν σε 24 και 50% βελτίωση του απαιτούμενου χρόνου μιας επανάληψης με μηδενική και σχετικά μικρή αύξηση της επιφάνειας ολοκλήρωσης αντίστοιχα. Ο όλος σχεδιασμός είναι πλήρως συνθέσιμος και η σωστή λειτουργία αυτού έχει επιβεβαιωθεί σε επίπεδο λογικής εξομοίωσης. Κατά τη διάρκεια σχεδιασμού, χρησιμοποιήθηκαν εργαλεία της Xilinx και MentorGraphics. / Αlmost all the modern telecommunication systems, which are designed for high data rate transmissions, have adopted error correction codes for improving the reliability and the required power of transmission. One special group of these codes, with extremely good performance, is the LDPC codes (Low-Density-Parity-Check codes). These codes are linear block codes with performance near to the theoretical Shannon limit. Furthermore, the inherent parallelism of the decoding procedure makes them suitable for implementation on hardware. In this thesis, we study the special characteristics of these codes in order to understand their astonishing correcting capability. Then, we choose a special category of these codes, whose parity check matrix are special designed to facilitate their implementation on hardware, and we design a high-throughput decoder. More specifically, we implement in VHDL an LDPC decoder according to the rate ½ and block_length 576 bits code of WiMax IEEE802.16e standard, with main purpose to achieve very high throughput. We use the two-phase scheduling at the message passing and we propose 2 modifications for reducing the required decoding time, which result in 25 and 50% improving of the required decoding time of one iteration with zero and little increasing in the decoder’s area respectively. Our design has been successfully simulated and synthesized. During the design process, we used Xiinx and MentorGraphics’s tools.

No description available.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / Since the advent of Naval Warfare, Tactical Knowledge Management (KM) has been critical to the success of the On Scene Commander. Today's Tactical Knowledge Manager typically operates in a high stressed environment with a multitude of knowledge sources including detailed sensor deployment plans, rules of engagement contingencies, and weapon delivery assignments. However the WarFighter has placed a heavy reliance on delivering this data with traditional messaging processes while focusing on information organization vice knowledge management. This information oriented paradigm results in a continuation of data overload due to the manual intervention of human resources. Focusing on the data archiving aspect of information management overlooks the advantages of computational processing while delaying the empowerment of the processor as an automated decision making tool. Resource Description Framework (RDF) and XML provide the potential of increased machine reasoning within a KM design allowing the WarFighter to migrate from the dependency on manual information systems to a more computational intensive Knowledge Management environment. However the unique environment of a tactical platform requires innovative solutions to automate the existing naval message architecture while improving the knowledge management process. This thesis captures the key aspects for building a prototype Knowledge Management Model and provides an implementation example for evaluation. The model developed for this analysis was instantiated to evaluate the use of RDF and XML technologies in the Knowledge Management domain. The goal for the prototype included: 1. Processing required technical links in RDF/XML for feeding the KM model from multiple information sources. 2. Experiment with the visualization of Knowledge Management processing vice traditional Information Resource Display techniques. The results from working with the prototype KM Model demonstrated the flexibility of processing all information data under an XML context. Furthermore the RDF attribute format provided a convenient structure for automated decision making based on multiple information sources. Additional research utilizing RDF/XML technologies will eventually enable the WarFighter to effectively make decisions under a Knowledge Management Environment. / Civilian, SPAWAR System Center San Diego

Multimedia services and applications became the driving force in the development and widespread deployment of wireless broadband access technologies and high speed local area networks. Mobile phone service providers are offering wide range of multimedia applications over high speed wireless data networks. People can watch live TV, stream on-demand video clips and place videotelephony calls using multimedia capable mobile devices. Mobile devices will soon support capturing and displaying high definition video. Similar evolution is also occurring in the local area domain. The video receiver or storage devices were conventionally connected to display devices using cables. By using wireless local area networking (WLAN) technologies, convenient and cable-free connectivity can be achieved. Media over wireless home networks prevents the cable mess and provides mobility to portable TVs. However, there still exit challenges for improving the quality-of-service (QoS) of multimedia applications. Conventional service architectures, network structures and protocols lack to provide a robust distribution medium since most of them are not designed considering the high data rate and real-time transmission requirements of digital video. In this thesis the challenges of wireless video streaming are addressed in two main categories. Streaming protocol level issues constitute the first category. We will refer to the collection of network protocols that enable transmitting digital compressed video from a source to a receiver as the streaming protocol. The objective of streaming protocol solutions is the high quality video transfer between two networked devices. Novel application-layer video bit-rate adaptation methods are designed for handling short- and long-term bandwidth variations of the wireless local area network (WLAN) links. Both transrating and scalable video coding techniques are used to generate video bit-rate flexibility. Another contribution of this thesis study is an error control method that dynamically adjusts the forward error correction (FEC) rate based on channel bit-error rate (BER) estimation and video coding structure. The second category is the streaming service level issues, which generally surface in large scale systems. Service system solutions target to achieve system scalability and provide low cost / high quality service to consumers. Peer-to-peer assisted video streaming technologies are developed to reduce the load of video servers. Novel video file segment caching strategies are proposed for more efficient peer-to-peer collaboration.

Due to growing transmission speed burst-forming errors tend to occur still more frequently not exclusively in data transmission. The presented paper concentrates on the search for alternative burst error correction solutions complementing the existing methods in use. Its objective is an elaboration of a detailed analysis of the issue of convolution codes for error burst correction which can be used in individual anti-error systems and thus an achievement of better results than those attained by mass application of the existing solutions. First the methods implemented to remove or suppress burst errors are briefly characterized. This part is followed by a detailed description of the individual systematic convolution codes by means of mathematical tools which extend the set of possible evaluative criteria of anti-error systems which can be applied while assessing proposals for individual solutions. The acquired code properties are compared with convolution codes as well as with other versions of proposals for message protection against an error burst. The processed convolution codes are subject to testing by means of Matlab mathematical programme simulation in order to validate the correctness of the derived mathematical tools. This is because simulation represents the principal method applied to verify and present an already proposed security process and enables the acquisition of a better overview of the issue at hand. The feasibility of the individual anti-error systems is then confirmed by way of creating a circuit behaviour description in the VHDL language. Its high portability presents a big advantage when drafting individual systems of the actual implementation.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / In order to plug-in current open sourced, open standard Java programming technology into the building blocks of the US Navy's ForceNet, first, stove-piped systems need to be made extensible to other pertinent applications and then a new paradigm of adopting extensible and cross-platform open technologies will begin to bridge gaps with old and new weapons systems. The battle-space picture in real time and with as much detail, or as little detail needed is now a current vital requirement. Access to this information via wireless laptop technology is here now. Transmission of data to increase the resolution of that battle-space snapshot will invariably be through noisy links. Noisy links such as found in the shallow water littoral regions of interest will be where Autonomous Underwater and Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (AUVs/UUVs) are gathering intelligence for the sea warrior in need of that intelligence. The battle-space picture built from data transmitted within these noisy and unpredictable acoustic regions demands efficiency and reliability features abstract to the user. To realize this efficiency Extensible Markup Language (XML) Schema-based Binary Compression (XSBC), in combination with Vandermode-based Forward Error Correction (FEC) erasure codes, offer the qualities of efficient streaming of plain text XML documents in a highly compressed form, and a data self-healing capability should there be loss of data during transmission in unpredictable transmission mediums. Both the XSBC and FEC libraries detailed in this thesis are open sourced Java Application Program Interfaces (APIs) that can be readily adapted for extensible, cross-platform applications that will be enhanced by these desired features to add functional capability to ForceNet for the sea warrior to access on demand, at sea and in real-time. These features will be presented in the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Workbench (AUVW) Java-based application that will become a valuable tool for warriors involved with Undersea Warfare (UW). / Lieutenant, United States Navy

A oferta de novos serviços para os usuários finais, como o denominado triple play, que consiste no tráfego simultâneo de voz, vídeo e dados utilizando a mesma infra-estrutura de comunicação, vem exigindo que as estruturas de rede das operadoras ofereçam largura de banda adequada e qualidade de serviço. Nesse contexto, as redes ópticas passivas (PON) vêm se destacando em virtude de oferecerem maior largura de banda a custos relativamente baixos. Nas redes ópticas passivas, trechos de fibras ópticas podem ser compartilhados entre diversos assinantes, exigindo, para isso, a utilização de técnicas de controle de acesso múltiplo. Destaque maior é dado à técnica de acesso múltiplo por divisão de códigos ópticos (OCDMA), por apresentar características tais como maior segurança e capacidade flexível sob demanda. O desempenho dessa tecnologia é basicamente limitado pela interferência de acesso múltiplo, ou interferência multiusuário (MAI). No presente trabalho, cenários OCDMA-PON utilizando códigos ópticos unidimensionais, baseados na codificação prima modificada (MPC), e bidimensionais, baseados na codificação óptica ortogonal de múltiplos comprimentos de onda (MWOOC), são descritos, e seus respectivos desempenhos investigados. Os desempenhos desses sistemas são verificados utilizando-se os seguintes esquemas de modulação: 1) On-off Keying (OOK), cujo formalismo para a codificação padded MPC (PMPC) e double padded MPC (DPMPC) foi aqui desenvolvido, 2) por posição de pulso (PPM), considerando os ruídos poissonianos de deteção, cujo formalismo foi também aqui desenvolvido, 3) por posição de pulso (PPM) considerando apenas a interferência de acesso múltiplo (MAI), 4) semelhante ao (3), porém, utilizando a técnica mitigadora de MAI via cancelamento paralelo de interferência (PIC), e 5) semelhante ao (4) porém utilizando modulação por chaveamento de frequência (FSK). Em seguida, a codificação bidimensional MWOOC, utilizando modulação OOK, é analisada com e sem a utilização de PIC. Além desses esquemas, são também incluídas, pela primeira vez nesses formalismos, técnicas de correção posterior de erro (FEC) baseadas no algoritmo Reed-Solomon (RS). A figura de mérito adotada nas simulações é baseada no cálculo da taxa de erro de bit (BER). Os resultados obtidos para os diversos casos investigados neste trabalho indicam que a combinação PIC/FEC deve ser considerada de modo a se obter níveis de BER compatíveis com a região livre de erros (BER < \'10 POT.-12\') para os cenários de redes de acesso atuais e futuros (visando atender a 32 ou 64 usuários simultâneos). / The advent of new services offered to end users, such as the so called triple play, which consists in the simultaneous traffic of voice, video, and data through the same communication infrastructure, has been pushing telecom operators towards providing adequate bandwidth as well as quality of service. This has brought the spotlight to passive optical networks (PONs) by virtue of their considerably higher bandwidth at relatively low cost. In PONs, certain fiber optic spans can be shared among different users as long as multiple access control techniques are used. One such technique is the optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) technique, which, in addition, presents improved data security and flexible capacity on demand. The performance of this technology is basically limited by multi access interference (MAI), which becomes more severe as the number of simultaneous users increases. In the present work, OCDMA-PON scenarios utilizing one- and two-dimensional optical codes separately such as modified prime codes (MPC) and multi-wavelength optical orthogonal codes (MWOOC), are described and thoroughly investigated. The performances of these systems are investigated based on the following modulation schemes: 1) On-off keying (OOK), where a new formalism for the double-padded MPC is proposed, 2) Pulse position modulation (PPM), and 3) Frequency shift keying (FSK) together with MAI mitigation technique based on parallel interference cancelation (PIC). Besides these schemes, it is also included for the first time in these formalisms forward error correction techniques (FEC) based on the Reed-Solomon (RS) algorithm. The figure of merit adopted in all simulations is the bit error rate (BER). The results obtained for the cases investigated in this work indicate that the combination PIC/FEC must be considered if one is interested in obtaining BER levels compatible with the error-free region (BER < \'10 POT.-12\') for the current and future access network scenarios (aiming at attending 32 or 64 simultaneous users).

A oferta de novos serviços para os usuários finais, como o denominado triple play, que consiste no tráfego simultâneo de voz, vídeo e dados utilizando a mesma infra-estrutura de comunicação, vem exigindo que as estruturas de rede das operadoras ofereçam largura de banda adequada e qualidade de serviço. Nesse contexto, as redes ópticas passivas (PON) vêm se destacando em virtude de oferecerem maior largura de banda a custos relativamente baixos. Nas redes ópticas passivas, trechos de fibras ópticas podem ser compartilhados entre diversos assinantes, exigindo, para isso, a utilização de técnicas de controle de acesso múltiplo. Destaque maior é dado à técnica de acesso múltiplo por divisão de códigos ópticos (OCDMA), por apresentar características tais como maior segurança e capacidade flexível sob demanda. O desempenho dessa tecnologia é basicamente limitado pela interferência de acesso múltiplo, ou interferência multiusuário (MAI). No presente trabalho, cenários OCDMA-PON utilizando códigos ópticos unidimensionais, baseados na codificação prima modificada (MPC), e bidimensionais, baseados na codificação óptica ortogonal de múltiplos comprimentos de onda (MWOOC), são descritos, e seus respectivos desempenhos investigados. Os desempenhos desses sistemas são verificados utilizando-se os seguintes esquemas de modulação: 1) On-off Keying (OOK), cujo formalismo para a codificação padded MPC (PMPC) e double padded MPC (DPMPC) foi aqui desenvolvido, 2) por posição de pulso (PPM), considerando os ruídos poissonianos de deteção, cujo formalismo foi também aqui desenvolvido, 3) por posição de pulso (PPM) considerando apenas a interferência de acesso múltiplo (MAI), 4) semelhante ao (3), porém, utilizando a técnica mitigadora de MAI via cancelamento paralelo de interferência (PIC), e 5) semelhante ao (4) porém utilizando modulação por chaveamento de frequência (FSK). Em seguida, a codificação bidimensional MWOOC, utilizando modulação OOK, é analisada com e sem a utilização de PIC. Além desses esquemas, são também incluídas, pela primeira vez nesses formalismos, técnicas de correção posterior de erro (FEC) baseadas no algoritmo Reed-Solomon (RS). A figura de mérito adotada nas simulações é baseada no cálculo da taxa de erro de bit (BER). Os resultados obtidos para os diversos casos investigados neste trabalho indicam que a combinação PIC/FEC deve ser considerada de modo a se obter níveis de BER compatíveis com a região livre de erros (BER < \'10 POT.-12\') para os cenários de redes de acesso atuais e futuros (visando atender a 32 ou 64 usuários simultâneos). / The advent of new services offered to end users, such as the so called triple play, which consists in the simultaneous traffic of voice, video, and data through the same communication infrastructure, has been pushing telecom operators towards providing adequate bandwidth as well as quality of service. This has brought the spotlight to passive optical networks (PONs) by virtue of their considerably higher bandwidth at relatively low cost. In PONs, certain fiber optic spans can be shared among different users as long as multiple access control techniques are used. One such technique is the optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) technique, which, in addition, presents improved data security and flexible capacity on demand. The performance of this technology is basically limited by multi access interference (MAI), which becomes more severe as the number of simultaneous users increases. In the present work, OCDMA-PON scenarios utilizing one- and two-dimensional optical codes separately such as modified prime codes (MPC) and multi-wavelength optical orthogonal codes (MWOOC), are described and thoroughly investigated. The performances of these systems are investigated based on the following modulation schemes: 1) On-off keying (OOK), where a new formalism for the double-padded MPC is proposed, 2) Pulse position modulation (PPM), and 3) Frequency shift keying (FSK) together with MAI mitigation technique based on parallel interference cancelation (PIC). Besides these schemes, it is also included for the first time in these formalisms forward error correction techniques (FEC) based on the Reed-Solomon (RS) algorithm. The figure of merit adopted in all simulations is the bit error rate (BER). The results obtained for the cases investigated in this work indicate that the combination PIC/FEC must be considered if one is interested in obtaining BER levels compatible with the error-free region (BER < \'10 POT.-12\') for the current and future access network scenarios (aiming at attending 32 or 64 simultaneous users).

Το ερευνητικό αντικείμενο της παρούσας διατριβής υπάγεται στον «Έλεγχο Σφαλμάτων» (Error Control), έναν επιστημονικό χώρο με καθοριστικής σημασίας συνεισφορά στην εξέλιξη των ψηφιακών τηλεπικοινωνιών. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, η παρούσα διατριβή πραγματεύεται την εφαρμογή του «ελέγχου σφαλμάτων» στην οπτική μετάδοση. Κατά τη διάρκεια της τελευταίας δεκαπενταετίας (‘93-‘08), τρεις γενιές «άμεσης διόρθωσης σφαλμάτων» (FEC) έχουν διαδεχθεί η μία την άλλη, σε ανταπόκριση προς τις ολοένα απαιτητικότερες προδιαγραφές των οπτικών ζεύξεων (υψηλότεροι ρυθμοί μετάδοσης και πυκνότερα οπτικά πλέγματα). Κατά κανόνα, οι μέθοδοι FEC κωδικοποιούν τα δεδομένα εισόδου χωρίς να έχουν γνώση γι’ αυτά (π.χ. δομή, πρωτόκολλο) και χωρίς να επεμβαίνουν σ’ αυτά. Η προσέγγιση αυτή καλείται «κωδικοποίηση εκτός ζώνης» (Out-Band Coding – OBC) και συνεπάγεται αύξηση του ρυθμού μετάδοσης στο οπτικό κανάλι σε σχέση με το ρυθμό των δεδομένων εισόδου, ανάλογα με το ποσοστό πλεονασμού του κώδικα. Ωστόσο, ο τελικός ρυθμός μετάδοσης στο κανάλι μπορεί να διατηρηθεί αμετάβλητος, αν το πρωτόκολλο μετάδοσης προβλέπει την ύπαρξη πλεονάσματος και μέρος αυτού μπορεί να διατεθεί για κωδικοποίηση FEC. Η εναλλακτική αυτή προσέγγιση καλείται «κωδικοποίηση εντός ζώνης» (In-Band Coding – IBC). Η «σύγχρονη ψηφιακή ιεραρχία» (SDH) και το «σύγχρονο οπτικό δίκτυο» (SONET) είναι τα πρότυπα, που σήμερα κυριαρχούν στις οπτικές τηλεπικοινωνίες. Με αφθονία πλεονάσματος στα πλαίσια μετάδοσης, τα παραπάνω σύγχρονα δίκτυα προσφέρονται για την IBC. Στα πλαίσια της παρούσας διατριβής, τα SDH & SONET αναλύθηκαν από κοινού για την εύρεση της βέλτιστης μεθόδου IBC με βάση έναν αριθμό από κριτήρια. Καταρχήν εξετάστηκε διεξοδικά το πλεόνασμα μετάδοσης για να εντοπιστούν τα διαθέσιμα bytes και να αιτιολογηθεί η δέσμευσή τους για την IBC. Στη συνέχεια, αναζητήθηκε ο βέλτιστος κώδικας FEC για τα δεδομένα πλαίσια μετάδοσης και με το δεδομένο πλεόνασμα (για την αποθήκευση των bits ισοτιμίας του κώδικα). Η βελτιστοποίηση κάλυψε όλους τους γραμμικούς και συστηματικούς κώδικες ανά κατηγορίες – ο χωρισμός τους σε κατηγορίες έγινε με βάση τις εξής βασικές ιδιότητες: α) την αλφάβητο: «δυαδικοί» έναντι «μη-δυαδικών», και β) τη διορθωτική ικανότητα: κώδικες κατάλληλοι για «τυχαία» (μεμονωμένα) σφάλματα έναντι κατάλληλων για «ομοβροντίες» (ριπές) σφαλμάτων. iii Από την παραπάνω διαδικασία βελτιστοποίησης προέκυψε μία μέθοδος IBC, που βασίζεται στο συρρικνωμένο Reed-Solomon κώδικα RS(240,236,9). Πρόκειται για μία εντελώς νέα μέθοδο και δικαιολογεί τη διάκρισή της ως βέλτιστη, έχοντας σαφή πλεονεκτήματα έναντι των μεθόδων, που είχαν προταθεί στο παρελθόν. Στα πλαίσια της παρούσας διατριβής, η παραπάνω βέλτιστη μέθοδος προτείνεται με το όνομα «FOCUS» για την κωδικοποίηση IBC στα δίκτυα SDH/SONET. Με στόχο την ακριβή πειραματική αξιολόγηση της προτεινόμενης μεθόδου FOCUS, υλοποιήθηκε κατόπιν ένας αριθμός από πρωτότυπα συστήματα, χρησιμοποιώντας τις διαθέσιμες μικροκυματικές κάρτες «10g-Tester». Αναλυτικότερα, η μοντελοποίηση έγινε στη γλώσσα περιγραφής υλικού VHDL και η υλοποίηση με προγραμματιζόμενη λογική (Xilinx® XC2V3000-4 FPGA). Τέλος, η πειραματική αξιολόγηση της προτεινόμενης μεθόδου FOCUS πραγματοποιήθηκε σε δύο διαδοχικές φάσεις: Στην πρώτη φάση, το σύστημα FOCUS αξιολογήθηκε ως μία «ανεξάρτητη» μέθοδος κωδικοποίησης FEC (stand-alone IBC evaluation). Η αξιολόγηση έγινε με ρυθμό μετάδοσης STM-64 σε κατάλληλα διαμορφωμένη, πειραματική οπτική ζεύξη «από-σημείο σε-σημείο» (point-to-point optical link), συνολικού μήκους ~88 χμ. Στην παραπάνω ζεύξη μετρήθηκαν οι επιδόσεις του FOCUS κατά την αντιστάθμιση των κυριότερων ατελειών της οπτικής μετάδοσης: α) της χρωματικής διασποράς (CD), β) της «παρασιτικής» ενίσχυσης του θορύβου από οπτικούς ενισχυτές (ASE) και γ) της μη-γραμμικής συμπεριφοράς (WDM -NL). Στη δεύτερη φάση, το σύστημα FOCUS αξιολογήθηκε ως μία «αναβάθμιση» για οπτικές ζεύξεις, οι οποίες διαθέτουν ήδη κωδικοποίηση OBC (evaluation of IBC and OBC in concatenation). Πιο συγκεκριμένα, το σύστημα FOCUS συνδέθηκε σε σειρά (ως εξωτερικός κώδικας) με το κατά ITU-T G.975 (2000) πρότυπο σύστημα κωδικοποίησης (OBC). Σε αυτή τη συνδεσμολογία, το σύστημα FOCUS αποτελεί τη δικλείδα ασφαλείας, που επεμβαίνει όταν ο εσωτερικός αποκωδικοποιητής (G.975) υπερχειλίζεται από τα σφάλματα του καναλιού. Η αξιολόγηση της υβριδικής αυτής μεθόδου κωδικοποίησης έγινε με ρυθμό μετάδοσης 10.66 Gb/s (SDH STM-64 x 15/14) σε μία καθαρά οπτική διάταξη μετατροπής μήκους κύματος, που αποτελείται από δύο οπτικούς ενισχυτές πυριτίου (SOA-based MZI). Ειδικότερα, μετρήθηκαν: α) η μείωση της ευαισθησίας της οπτικής διάταξης στις (τυχαίες) μεταβολές φάσης των δύο σημάτων εισόδου και β) η καθαρή συνεισφορά του συστήματος FOCUS, όταν αυτό επεμβαίνει ως δικλείδα ασφαλείας. Το FOCUS συγκεντρώνει σημαντική καινοτομία, τόσο στην επινόηση όσο και στην υλοποίηση. Όλα τα συμπεράσματα της αξιολόγησης έχουν δημοσιευτεί σε έγκυρα διεθνή περιοδικά και συνέδρια. / This Ph.D. thesis falls into “Error Control”, a scientific field with key contribution to the evolution of digital telecommunications. In specific, this thesis treats optical transmission in terms of “Error Control”. Noteworthy is the fact that during the last fifteen years (‘93-‘08), three generations of “Forward Error Correction” (FEC) methods for optical transmission have succeeded one another, in response to the increasingly demanding optical link specifications (higher transmission rates, denser wavelength mesh). In general, FEC-methods assume no prior knowledge of the input data (e.g. structure, protocol); in addition, input data are not modified at all (i.e. under normal channel conditions, output-data will be identical to the input data). This approach is called “Out-Band Coding” (OBC) and incurs an increase of the optical channel data-rate relatively to the input data-rate, inversely proportional to the coding-rate. Notwithstanding, the rate of the optical-channel can be kept unchanged, on condition that the transmission protocol provides “overhead” and part of this “overhead” can be allocated for parity-information. This alternative approach is called “In-Band Coding” (IBC). The “Synchronous Digital Hierarchy” (SDH) and the “Synchronous Optical Network” (SONET) are currently the dominant standards in optical communications. The abundance of overhead in transmission-frames renders these synchronous networks suitable for IBC. In this thesis, SDH and SONET were analyzed together to determine the optimum IBC method with respect to a number of criteria. Firstly, SDH/SONET transmission-overhead was scrutinized in order to identify available bytes and justify their commitment to implement IBC. Next, the optimum FEC-code was sought, given the size of the transmission-frames and the availability of overhead (to allocate the parity bits). Optimization spanned all linear and systematic codes. The codes were divided in groups according to the following fundamental properties: a) the underlying alphabet: “binary” versus “non-binary” codes, and b) the corrective power: codes, appropriate for “random” (isolated) errors versus codes, appropriate for “burst-form” errors. Optimization resulted in an IBC-method, which relies on the shortened Reed-Solomon code RS(240,236,9). This IBC-method is completely novel and its optimality can be verified by the clear advantages, it presents over methods that were proposed in the past. In this thesis, the above IBC-method is given the name “FOCUS” and proposed for IBC in SDH/SONET networks. In order to accurately measure the performance of the proposed method “FOCUS”, a number of prototypes were implemented by making use of microwave cards, called “10gv Tester”. More specifically, “FOCUS” was modelled in the “VHDL” hardware description language and its prototypes were implemented by means of a Xilinx® “XC2V3000-4” FPGA. The experimental evaluation of the proposed method was conducted in two successive phases: During the first phase, “FOCUS” was evaluated as an independent (stand-alone) FEC method. This evaluation took place at an STM-64 transmission-rate in a suitable experimental “point-to-point” optical link, whose length was ~88 km. In the above link, the performance of “FOCUS” was measured, in compensating the principal impairments of optical transmission: a) the chromatic dispersion (CD), b) the parasitic amplification of noise by optical amplifiers (ASE), and c) the non-linear behavior (WDM-NL). During the second phase, “FOCUS” was evaluated as an “upgrade” for optical links, which have already been equipped with OBC (evaluation of IBC and OBC in concatenation). Specifically, “FOCUS” was concatenated with the OBC-method, which has been proposed in rec. G.975 (ITU-T, 2000) with “FOCUS” as the outer- and “G.975” as the inner-code. In this arrangement, “FOCUS” plays the role of the “safety-valve”, which prevents the inner decoder (G.975) from deteriorating the error-rate of the optical link, when it is overwhelmed by severe channel-conditions. The evaluation of this hybrid coding-method took place at a transmissionrate of 10.66 Gb/s (SDH STM-64 x 15/14) in a purely optical wavelength conversion device, which consists of two silicon optical amplifiers (SOA-based MZI). In the above wavelengthconversion device, the following measurements were obtained: a) the reduction of sensitivity of the optical wavelength converter to the (random) phase-changes of the two input signals, and b) the net contribution of “FOCUS”, when acting as a “safety valve”. “FOCUS” has many innovative aspects, both in its conception and the implementation of its prototypes. All conclusions of the above two-phased experimental evaluation have been published in international journals and conferences.