Fiber optical parametric amplifiers in optical communication systems

Michel E Marhic; Peter A Andrekson; Periklis Petropoulos; Stojan Radic; Christophe Peucheret; Mahmoud Jazayerifar

doi:10.1002/lpor.201400087

Fiber optical parametric amplifiers in optical communication systems

Laser Photon Rev. 2015 Jan;9(1):50-74. doi: 10.1002/lpor.201400087. Epub 2014 Sep 30.

Authors

Michel E Marhic¹, Peter A Andrekson², Periklis Petropoulos³, Stojan Radic⁴, Christophe Peucheret⁵, Mahmoud Jazayerifar⁶

Affiliations

¹ College of Engineering, Swansea University Swansea, Wales, UK ; In memory of Professor Michel E. Marhic, a pioneer in the research of fiber optical parametric amplifiers, who passed away unexpectedly during the preparation of this paper.
² Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience, Chalmers University of Technology Gothenburg, Sweden.
³ Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.
⁴ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Jacobs School of Engineering, University of California San Diego 9500 Gilman Dr, La Jolla, CA, 92093-0407, USA.
⁵ FOTON Laboratory, CNRS UMR 6082, ENSSAT, University of Rennes 1 Lannion, France ; Department of Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kgs Lyngby, Denmark.
⁶ Technische Universität Berlin, Fachgebiet Hochfrequenztechnik-Photonics 10587, Berlin, Germany.

Abstract

The prospects for using fiber optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) in optical communication systems are reviewed. Phase-insensitive amplifiers (PIAs) and phase-sensitive amplifiers (PSAs) are considered. Low-penalty amplification at/or near 1 Tb/s has been achieved, for both wavelength- and time-division multiplexed formats. High-quality mid-span spectral inversion has been demonstrated at 0.64 Tb/s, avoiding electronic dispersion compensation. All-optical amplitude regeneration of amplitude-modulated signals has been performed, while PSAs have been used to demonstrate phase regeneration of phase-modulated signals. A PSA with 1.1-dB noise figure has been demonstrated, and preliminary wavelength-division multiplexing experiments have been performed with PSAs. 512 Gb/s have been transmitted over 6,000 km by periodic phase conjugation. Simulations indicate that PIAs could reach data rate x reach products in excess of 14,000 Tb/s × km in realistic wavelength-division multiplexed long-haul networks. Technical challenges remaining to be addressed in order for fiber OPAs to become useful for long-haul communication networks are discussed. [Formula: see text].

Keywords: fiber nonlinearities; fiber optic communication; mid-span spectral inversion; parametric amplifiers; phase regeneration; phase-sensitive amplification; signal regeneration.