We present the development and verification testing of a high speed multimode, multicore transceiver technology for intra-satellite optical interconnects. We report the fabrication and functional testing of opto-parts including 25 Gb/s 850 nm VCSEL/PD as well as the verification testing of the VCSELs against radiation and lifetime performance. In addition we report the development and evaluation testing of a multi-core cable assembly that was fabricated and mated with MiniAVIM multi-core connectors to develop hi-rel multi-core optical patchcords for pigtailing the transceiver modules. The fiber optic, electronic and opto-parts were used to assemble the first ever fully packaged and pigtailed, six-core optical transceiver prototype module that operates at 25 Gb/s channel bit rate at an energy consumption of ∠4.5 mW/Gb/s.
Multicore fiber enables a parallel optic data link in a single optical fiber. Thus, it is an attractive approach to increase the aggregate data throughput and the integration density of the interconnection.
We developed and demonstrated mid-board optical transceiver modules employing novel multicore fiber pigtails and multicore-optimized optoelectronic engines. The silica fibers having 125 µm diameter and including six graded-index multimode cores enable multi-gigabit interconnects at very short distances. The fiber is compatible with the 850-nm VCSEL technology that has many advantages, such as, the very low power operation and the mature and cost-effective GaAs-based device technology.
The transceiver incorporates transmitter and receiver subassemblies that are based on the multicore-optimized 850-nm VCSEL and photodiode array chips as well as on the co-designed multichannel VCSEL driver and TIA receiver ICs. All devices are operating up to 25 Gbps/channel and beyond, thus creating a 150 Gbps full-duplex link with the two 6-core fibers. The active areas on the 6-channel VCSEL and PD chips are arranged in a circular array layout that matches the cross-sectional layout of the fiber cores. This allows butt coupling to the fiber cores. The power consumption of the complete link is below 5 mW/Gbps.
The transceiver was developed to be applicable for harsh environmental conditions, including space. Therefore, for instance, hermetic packaging was applied and both the active devices and the integration structure enable very wide operation temperature range of up to approx. 100 °C.
This paper will present the technical approach including the basic building blocks and the transceiver module implementation. It will also present the results of the data link performance and some reliability testing.
Modern broadband communication networks rely on satellites to complement the terrestrial telecommunication infrastructure. Satellites accommodate global reach and enable world-wide direct broadcasting by facilitating wide access to the backbone network from remote sites or areas where the installation of ground segment infrastructure is not economically viable. At the same time the new broadband applications increase the bandwidth demands in every part of the network - and satellites are no exception. Modern telecom satellites incorporate On-Board Processors (OBP) having analogue-to-digital (ADC) and digital-to-analogue converters (DAC) at their inputs/outputs and making use of digital processing to handle hundreds of signals; as the amount of information exchanged increases, so do the physical size, mass and power consumption of the interconnects required to transfer massive amounts of data through bulk electric wires.
Multicore fiber enables a parallel optic data link with a single optical fiber, thus providing an attractive way to increase the total throughput and the integration density of the interconnections. We study and present photonics integration technologies and optical coupling approaches for multicore transmitter and receiver subassemblies. Such optical engines are implemented and characterized using multimode 6-core fibers and multicore-optimized active devices: 850-nm VCSEL and PD arrays with circular layout and multi-channel driver and receiver ICs. They are developed for bit-rates of 25 Gbps/channel and beyond, i.e. <150 Gbps per fiber, and also optimized for ruggedized transceivers with extended operation temperature range, for harsh environment applications, including space.
Chirped pulse amplification is a durable and widely used scheme for producing short pulses with duration less than 1ps
and pulse energies from μJ to even mJ levels. The compressor unit needs to be able to handle high peak powers and is
therefore traditionally made out of free space diffraction gratings. The stretcher unit, on the other hand, only has to
handle low peak power and can therefore be realized with a dispersion managed fiber. We review our work on stretcher
fiber design and dispersion managed modules in the Ytterbium gain band and Erbium gain band and present a modified
stretcher fiber for managing numerically higher third and fourth order dispersion. The modified design allows for a lower
incident angle on the compressor gratings and thereby reducing the grating separation and compressor size.
The orthogonality of Mode Division Multiplexing (MDM) with Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and
Polarization Division Multiplexing (PDM) is investigated applying WDM and PDM transmission over the LP11 mode in
a few-moded fiber. Two wavelengths, each carrying 10Gbit/s signals in two orthogonal polarizations are successfully
transmitted with the LP11 mode in a 10km long 2-mode fiber, resulting in a total 40Gbit/s data rate for one LP mode.
This experiment demonstrates that MDM is orthogonal with WDM and PDM and can be regarded as a new additional
dimension to increase optical networks' capacity.
We present an all-silica fiber-based module with anomalous dispersion below 800nm. The fiber module is based on
propagation in a higher-order-mode (HOM), and mode conversion is achieved using UV inscribed broadband longperiod
gratings. The large normal material dispersion in silica in the near infrared is compensated by anomalous
waveguide dispersion of the HOM resulting in a total HOM dispersion of +112.7ps/(nm•km) (β2 = -0.0355ps2/m) at
770nm. The dispersion has been calculated from the preform index profile and measured with a white light
interferometer. The operation bandwidth is ~20nm with an insertion loss of ~1.5dB. The multipath interference noise is
less than -27dB in the operation bandwidth. Nearly linear pulse propagation can be obtained for pulse energies up to
65pJ at 75fs pulse duration. This power regime is interesting for e.g. medical two-photon fluorescence imaging. The
proposed anomalous dispersion module is demonstrated in a 3.6m long femtosecond fiber delivery application to deliver
110fs pulses directly from the output of a Ti:Sapphire femtosecond laser without the need for pre-chirping.
Femtosecond fiber lasers are currently of great interest due to their small size, stable operation, long lifetime and low
cost compared to bulk lasers. However, for operation in the 1 µm wavelength range of Yb lasers, a major obstacle has
been the lack of suitable fibers with anomalous dispersion that can compensate for the normal dispersion of the
conventional active and passive fibers used. However, a new promising fiber device using a higher order mode (HOM)
with anomalous dispersion in the 1 μm range has recently been demonstrated. The device comprises integrated all fiber
mode converters based on long period gratings (LPG), and hence has the potential to be low loss and easy to splice,
while offering a large effective area, and the possibility of third order dispersion compensation.
In this paper, optimization of HOM fibers with anomalous dispersion in the 1 μm range has been investigated
theoretically and experimentally. Fibers with dispersion coefficients ranging from +50 to +300 ps/(nm·km) at 1060 nm
have been fabricated and devices including integrated LPG mode converters have been characterized. Modeled and
measured properties of the modules, such as dispersion, grating bandwidth etc., are found to correlate well. It is shown
that there is a tradeoff between a high dispersion coefficient and the bandwidth of LPG mode converters.
The characteristics of such HOM devices have been studied in a linear, passively mode-locked laser-cavity using
SESAM as saturable absorber.
Supercontinuum generation in highly nonlinear fibers (HNLF) pumped with femtosecond pulses is an area of large
interest for applications such as broad band light sources, tunable femtosecond sources, frequency metrology, and
fluorescence microscopy. In the last few years, a lot of focus has been put on optimizing photonics crystal fibers for
supercontinuum application. In this paper, we will focus on conventional silica based HNLF, which e.g. have the
advantage of precise dispersion control, and easy splicing to standard single mode fibers.
We have performed a systematic experimental study of the effect of dispersion, of the HNLF as well as the input power
to the HNLF. To pump the fiber we have build an femtosecond fiber laser consisting of a passive mode locked figure
eight oscillator followed by an amplifier. The dispersion before coupling into the HNLF was optimized for broadest
supercontinuum generation. Supercontinuum generation in both standard and polarization maintaining HNLF are
studied.
Directly modulated lasers (DML) have been widely used in data rate at 2.5 Gb/s and below. The advantages of
its simplicity and cost effectiveness have attracted considerable amount of effort in developing DMLs for higher data
rate optical transmission systems, especially for short reach applications. The major issue is semiconductor laser's
intrinsic modulation bandwidth and the amplitude modulation induced frequency chirp at high speed of 10 Gb/s and
beyond. In this paper, we first briefly review the advancement of directly modulated lasers at 10 Gb/s and above. We
then present our work on the investigation of using 10 Gb/s directly modulated laser in multiple amplified spans of a
typical metro system. The experimental results show that 10 Gb/s DML may have potential to be a cost-effective option
for a typical 100GHz spacing DWDM, 6x80km metro link over standard single-mode fiber. The DML performance will
also be compared to conventional Mach-Zehnder modulator-based transmitter.
Germanium doped glasses show a permanent increase of the refractive index after illumination with UV light. With a UV interference pattern produced by a phasemask, permanent Bragg gratings can be induced in optical fibers and planar waveguides. The growth of these Bragg gratings shows oscillations meaning that the grating reflectivity raises, reaches a maximum, then vanishes slowly and raises again to another maximum. We have recorded the first oscillation in more than ten different non-sensitized germanosilicate fibers. In this paper we present a model of the growth behavior, relating it to the visibility of the interference pattern generated by the phasemask, showing that the coherence of the laser light used to induce the grating has a strong influence on the growth behavior of the Bragg grating. The model is in excellent agreement with the measured grating growth behavior.
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