Optical transport system for two-carrier signals

摘要

In one embodiment, the optical transport system has an optical transmitter, an optical receiver, and one or more phase-sensitive amplifiers (PSAs) disposed within an optical link that connects the optical transmitter and receiver. The optical transmitter employs a first nonlinear optical process to generate a two-carrier signal in a manner that makes this signal suitable for phase-sensitive amplification. The PSAs employ a second nonlinear optical process to optically amplify the two-carrier signal in a phase-sensitive manner to counteract the attenuation imposed onto the two-carrier signal by lossy components of the optical link. The optical receiver employs a third nonlinear optical process in a manner that enables the receiver to beneficially use redundancies in the two-carrier signal, e.g., for an SNR gain. The optical transport system can advantageously be implemented to have better noise properties than a comparable conventional system, which enables a commensurate increase in the data-transport capacity.

主权项

1. An apparatus, comprising:
a nonlinear optical device configured to optically mix, via a first nonlinear optical process, a first modulated optical signal and a second modulated optical signal to generate a first mixed signal and a second mixed signal; an optical detector configured to generate a first measure and a second measure, said first measure being a measure of the first mixed signal and said second measure being a measure of the second mixed signal; and a signal processor configured to:
determine a constellation symbol based on the first and second measures; anddecode the constellation symbol to determine a corresponding bit word carried by the first and second modulated optical signals; and wherein the first nonlinear optical process is a Bragg-scattering process; and wherein the nonlinear optical device is configured to optically mix, via the Bragg-scattering process, the first modulated optical signal, the second modulated optical signal, a first optical-pump signal, and a second optical-pump signal, with the first mixed signal and the second mixed signal being generated via said mixing.