<p> With the increasing demand for data rate and transmission distance, the trend in fiber-optic communications is to build an ultra-high, long-haul transmission system. One of the challenges in this kind of systems comes from the fiber dispersion and dispersion slope. For the wide-band wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) system or ultra-high bit rate optical time-division multiplexing (OTDM) system, the dispersion slope could be a serious problem to impair the system performance.</p> <p> Many studies have shown that the dispersion and dispersion slope affect the long-haul fiber transmission dramatically, especially for the high-capacity systems. Most of them recommend to totally compensate the dispersion and the dispersion slope simultaneously. And a lot of compensating techniques are proposed. However, it is not easy to realize the simultaneous compensation for the dispersion and dispersion slope in the practical systems. Therefore, the necessity of compensating the dispersion slope in wide-bandwidth systems should be verified.</p> <p> We focus on the study of ultra-high bit rate (160-Gb/s) single-channel fiber-optic transmission. The results show that the dispersion slope is not necessary for the dispersion-managed system when the optimal launch parameters are given. Then we present how to find out the optimum in fiber-optic systems and a novel optimizing technology, space mapping technology (SM) is introduced, which has been successfully applied to the electromagnetic area. An application of SM in optical systems is implemented. By using this smart optimization technique, lots of computational efforts for evaluating the fine model in optimization process are saved.</p> / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

<p> This thesis deals with the limiting factors in the design of a long-haul fiber-optic communication system, and the techniques used to suppress their resulting impairments. These limiting factors include both linear and nonlinear effects, such as fiber chromatic dispersion and the Kerr nonlinearity, and the modulator-induced nonlinearity. </p> <p> In Chapter 3, the conditional probability density function (PDF) of the received elect rical signal given transmitted bit '1 '/'0' for a coherent fiber-optic transmission system based on binary phase shift keying (BPSK) is mathematically derived. Both amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise and fiber nonlinearity are taken into account . The results show that the conditional PDF of given bit '1' or '0' is asymmetric when intrachannel four-wave mixing (IFWM) is dominant, while it becomes nearly symmetric when the variance of ASE is much larger than that due to IFWM. The standard deviation of the received signal is calculated analytically. The system parameters, including optimum dispersion map and pre-compensation ratio, are optimized by analytically calculating variance of IFWM. Significant computation efforts can be saved using this approach as compared to full numerical simulations of the nonlinear Schrodinger equation, without losing much accuracy. </p> <p> In Chapter 4, an improved 4-f time-lens configuration is proposed. Fourier transform (FT) and inverse Fourier transform (IFT) can be realized using time lenses such that there is no need for time reversal at the end. A typical 4-f configuration consists of two 2-f systems and a temporal filter. The first 2-f system consisting of a time lens and two dispersive elements produces the Fourier transform (FT) of the input signal. The temporal filter modifies the spectrum. The next 2-f system produces the inverse Fourier transform (IFT). A wavelength division demultiplexer and a higher-order dispersion compensator based on 4-f configuration are numerical implemented. One of the advantages of the time-lens-based temporal filtering technique is that the transfer function of the temporal filter can be dynamically altered by changing the input voltage to the temporal filter (amplitude/phase modulator) and therefore, this technique could be used for dynamic switching and multiplexing in optical networks. </p> <p> In chapter 5, a direct-detection optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DD-0-0FDM) is realized using time lenses. Typically, in OFDM systems, discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is used at the transmitter and inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) is used at the receiver. In this chapter, it is proposed to use continuous Fourier transform (FT) and inverse Fourier transform (IFT) using time lenses that replace DFT and IDFT in the electrical domain. The third- and higher-order dispersive effects can be considerably reduced using the proposed DD-0-0FDM scheme. </p> <p> In Chapter 6, a coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) (C0-0-0FDM) scheme using time lenses is analyzed. The comparison of performance between the proposed scheme and the conventional optical OFDM scheme using fast Fourier transform (FFT) and inverse FFT in the electrical domain is made. Both the Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) induced and fiber induced nonlinearities are investigated. Results show that the time-lens-based C0-0-0FDM performs almost the same as the FFT-based C0-0-0FDM when the message signal launched to MZM is low so that MZM operates in the linear region. The nonlinearity of MZM degrades the performance of FFT-based C0-0-0FDM drastically when the power of message signal becomes sufficiently large, but only has negligible impact on the time-lens-based C0-0-0FDM. A periodical driving voltage has been proposed to set up the time lens such that the maximally required driving voltage level is kept low within the time frame. The advantages using the time-lens-based C0-0-0FDM are that (i) FT can be done in optical domain almost instantaneously, whereas the FFT in digital domain is slow and requires significant computational efforts, (ii) optical domain Fourier transform has a large bandwidth (~THz) and therefore, FT /IFT can be performed at a large symbol rate. </p> <p> In Chapter 7, the digital backward propagation (DBP) has been studied both in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing ( OFDM) and single-carrier (SC) fiber-optic transmission systems. 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is used for both systems with the bit rate of 100 Gbjs. The results show that OFDM and SC with Nyquist pulses (SC-Nyquist) have a superior performance as compared to SC with raisedcosine pulses (SC-NRZ) when the DBP is used. The impact of electrical filter bandwidth and nonlinear phase/amplitude noise has also been investigated. The performance of perfect-BP-based OFDM/SC initially improves when the electrical filter bandwidth increases at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The comparison of the effects of nonlinear phase/amplitude noise among OFDM, SC-Nyquist and SC-NRZ systems is made and it is shown that SC-NRZ systems significantly suffer from the effects of nonlinear phase/amplitude noise, which explains the performance advantage of OFDM/SC-Nyquist over SC-NRZ when the DBP used. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)