Optical Fiber Technology 19 (2013) 13

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Optical Fiber Technology

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A new feedback control method to stabilize ber-optical parametric oscillators for clock extraction
Feng Wen, Bao-Jian Wu , Kun Qiu, Te Luo, Zhi Li
Key Lab of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications, Ministry of Education, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
A new feedback control technique with the capability of dynamic compensation for the cavity length of ber-optical parametric oscillators (FOPOs) is proposed by analyzing the time delay dependence of the idler optical power. Our experiments show that the idler optical power is approximately proportional to the FOPO cavity length variation or the resulting time delay, and then an electronically tunable optical delay line can be used to signicantly improve the stability of the FOPO. By feeding back the idler power, a stable 10 Gb/s clock recovery based on the FOPO is obtained and the normalized time jitter of output clock signal remains at about 1.1%. 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 2 May 2012 Revised 15 June 2012 Available online 12 July 2012 Keywords: Nonlinear optics Optical parametric process Fiber-optical parametric oscillator Clock extraction

1. Introduction Fiber-optical parametric oscillators (FOPOs) have been investigated intensively in recent years because of the development of high-speed optical communication networks. The FOPOs can work as tunable picosecond optical pulse sources [1], all-optical clock recovery devices [2,3] or multi-wavelength lasers [4], which are useful for high-speed optical communication networks. However, the stability of the FOPOs with long ber cavity still needs to be improved further. The cavity length drift resulting from the uctuation of environmental temperature or other factors can make the FOPO lose synchronization easily. In order to solve this problem, several methods have been reported, for example, those of introducing the large dispersion inside the cavity [5,6] and the regenerative mode-locking technique [7], in which the light wavelength or the repetition rate will be changed. In the mode-locked Er-doped ber laser, the relaxation oscillation radio frequency (RF) power is suppressed by adjusting the tunable optical delay line (TODL) [8], which can also be applied to the all-optical clock recovery based on an active FOPO. In this paper, we demonstrate a new feedback control technique to stabilize the FOPO cavity length by utilizing the approximately linear relationship of four-wave-mixing (FWM) idler power with the time delay induced by the cavity length variation. At the same time, the cavity length can be compensated by using a TODL under control of the feedback voltage converted from the idler power. This method proposed here is able

to keep the wavelength and the repetition rate constant, which is most likely desirable for optical communication networks.

2. Experimental setup To obtain a stable clock pulse, the cavity length variation caused by the temperature or other environmental disturbance is reduced by tuning the TODL in our scheme. Therefore, a feedback signal which can be used to monitor the clocks quality and drive the TODL is important. Because the quality of the extracted clock signal is highly dependent on the parametric gain in the FOPO, we can choose a parameter related with the parametric gain as the feedback signal. When the pump depletion and ber loss are neglected, the signal and idler powers at the ber output (z = L) are given [9]:

Psignal L Psignal 01 1 j2 =4g 2 sinh gL Pidler L P signal 01 j =4g sinh gL

2 2 2

where Psignal(0), Psignal(L) and Pidler(L) are signal and idler powers at the ber input (z = 0) and the ber output (z = L); j is the phase misq 2 match; and the parameter g is g U2 NL j=2 , in which UNL is the nonlinear phase caused by the pump signal. According to Eq. (1), the linear relationship of signal and idler powers is obtained. Therefore, the idler power can be used as the feedback signal to monitor the quality of the output clock pulse. Fig. 1 demonstrates the FOPO experimental setup with the idler feedback control circuit for all-optical clock recovery. The clock signal will be extracted from the input return-to-zero (RZ) signal in the active FOPO. The idler feedback control circuit will monitor

Corresponding author. Fax: +86 10 61830623.

E-mail address: bjwu@uestc.edu.cn (B.-J. Wu). 1068-5200/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.yofte.2012.06.007

F. Wen et al. / Optical Fiber Technology 19 (2013) 13

Fig. 1. Fiber optical parametric oscillator with the idler feedback control circuit.

the clocks quality from the idler optical power and adjust the TODL to make the FOPO stable. 2.1. The active FOPO The input 10 Gb/s RZ pump signal with the wavelength of kIn = 1555.7 nm is coupled into the FOPO using the optical Multiplexer (MUX). The pulsewidth of input pump signal is 50 ps. The idler feedback signal originates from the FWM process in the FOPO. A typical FWM spectrum is shown in the insert of Fig. 1. The HNLF used in our experiments is provided by Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable Company and the parameters are: the ber length is 500 m, the loss is 2 dB, the nonlinear coefcient c is 10 W1/km, the zero-dispersion wavelength k0 is 1556 nm and the corresponding dispersion slope S is 0.016 ps/nm2/km. The extracted clock signal is at the wavelength kC = 1550.9 nm. The Erbium-doped ber amplier (EDFA) gain in the FOPO is set below the oscillation threshold. The total cavity loss is about 13.5 dB. The polarization controller (PC) is used to maximize the parametric gain. The TODL used in the FOPO has two functions: one is to match the FOPO cavity length with the data rate of the input RZ pump signal; the other is to compensate for the cavity length by the feedback control circuit. The clock signal is obtained from the 50:50 optical coupler and observed by the digital serial analyzer (Tektronix, DSA72004C) and the spectrum analyzer (HP 8593E). 2.2. The idler feedback control circuit The idler signal as the feedback signal is de-multiplexed at kF = 1560.5 nm and amplied by the EDFA, and then an electric signal is obtained via the optical/electrical (O/E) detector. The digital multimeter (National Instruments, DMM PXI-4065) and the signal processing/control unit are used to get a low-frequency control signal to drive the TODL with the minimum step of 0.1 ps. 3. Experimental results and discussion We rstly investigate the clock extraction performance of the FOPO without the idler feedback control circuit. The clock signals will be extracted from three kinds of 10 Gb/s RZ pseudorandom binary sequences (PRBS, 231 1) as pump signals, corresponding

to the mark ratios (MR) of 1, 7/8 and 3/4, respectively. Mark ratio is the ratio of 1s in a PRBS stream. Because the parametric gain is related with the peak power of the pump signal, the required average power is low to the pump signal with low MR. The input average optical powers are respectively 17.68 dBm, 17.51 dBm and 16.66 dBm. The output clock power is 7.27 dBm. In the experiment, we tune the TODL in the FOPO as the cavity length variation. When the cavity length is adjusted to closely match with the data rate of the input pump signal, we start to measure the root-mean-square (RMS) time jitter and amplitude noise of extracted clock signals. The TODL delay time corresponds to the relative time delay of 0 ps in Fig. 2. The time jitter and amplitude noise are used to describe the uctuations in the phase and amplitude of the signal, respectively. Then we continue to tune the TODL and the dependence of clock qualities on the cavity length variations is given in Fig. 2. The time jitter and amplitude noise are normalized by the unit interval (UI) and the peak-to-peak voltage (Vpp), respectively. It is seen that, only just for the matching case between the FOPO cavity length and the data rate, high quality clock signal can be obtained and the normalized time jitter and amplitude noise are 1.2% and 0.04, respectively. Comparing with the input RZ signal with the normalized time jitter of 0.94% and amplitude noise of 0.02, the

Fig. 2. The cavity length dependences of the clock performance.

F. Wen et al. / Optical Fiber Technology 19 (2013) 13

Fig. 3. The cavity length dependences of the idler optical power as well as the A/D voltage.

of the FOPOs with and without the idler feedback control circuit are carried out several times at room temperature. The continuous operating time can be signicantly improved by using our feedback control technique proposed in the paper. The clocks quality and the idler voltage in the comparison experiment are given in Fig. 4. The waveform and RF spectrum A is the initially extracted clock. The waveforms and RF spectra B and C are obtained after 12 min from the FOPO without the feedback circuit and after 1 h from the FOPO with the feedback circuit, respectively. The resolution bandwidth of the spectrum analyzer is 10 kHz. From Fig. 4, the FOPO without the idler feedback control circuit only lasts for 9 min at room temperature. By contrast, the FOPO with the idler feedback control circuit is capable of operating in the range of low normalized time jitter (around 1.1%) all the time. Because of the ultrafast response of the ber parametric gain and the slow change of the cavity length, the stable clock recovery based on the FOPO with the idler feedback control circuit can work at several hundred Gb/s. 4. Conclusion By utilizing the one-to-one relationship between the quality of extracted clock signal and the idler power, we demonstrate a stable all-optical clock extraction of 10 Gb/s from the FOPO with the idler feedback control circuit. The output clock signal can remain at the normalized time jitter of 1.1%. The cavity length uctuation induced by the environmental disturbance can be automatically compensated and then the continuous operating time of the FOPO is greatly extended. Acknowledgments This work was supported in part by the Major State Basic Research Development Program of China under Grant 2011CB301703 and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University under Grant NECT-08-0092. References
[1] Y. Zhou, K.K.Y. Cheung, S. Yang, P.C. Chui, K.K.Y. Wong, Widely-tunable picosecond optical parametric oscillator using highly-nonlinear ber, Opt. Lett. 34 (2009) 989991. [2] Y. Su, L. Wang, A. Agarwal, P. Kumar, Wavelength-tunable all-optical clock recovery using a ber-optic parametric oscillator, Opt. Commun. 184 (2000) 151156. [3] J. Li, T. Huang, L.R. Chen, Detailed analysis of all-optical clock recovery at 10 Gb/ s based on a ber optical parametric oscillator, IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quant. Electron. 18 (2012) 701708. [4] J. Li, L.R. Chen, Tunable and recongurable multiwavelength ber optical parametric oscillator with 25 GHz spacing, Opt. Lett. 35 (2010) 18721874. [5] S. Yang, K.K.Y. Cheung, Y. Zhou, K.K.Y. Wong, Dispersion-tuned harmonically mode-locked ber-optical parametric oscillator, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 22 (2010) 580582. [6] K. Tamura, M. Nakazawa, Dispersion-tuned harmonically mode-locked ber ring laser for self-synchronization to an external clock, Opt. Lett. 21 (1996) 19841986. [7] M. Nakazawa, E. Yoshida, Y. Kimura, Ultrastable harmonically and regeneratively modelocked polarization-maintaining erbium ber ring laser, Electron. Lett. 30 (1994) 16031605. [8] H. Takara, S. Kawanishi, M. Saruwatari, Stabilisation of a modelocked Er-doped bre laser by suppressing the relaxation oscillation frequency component, Electron. Lett. 31 (1995) 292293. [9] G.P. Agrawal, Nonlinear Fiber Optics, third ed., Academic, Beijing, 2005. 412.

Fig. 4. The stability of the FOPOs with and without the idler feedback control circuit.

intrinsic time jitter and amplitude noise caused by the ber dispersion and the amplied spontaneous emission (ASE) of EDFA are very low in our FOPO. In addition, because of the less 1 signal in the pump signal with low MR, the clock performance is more sensitive to the cavity length variation due to the pattern effect, especially for mismatching cases. Then, the operating range of the TODL is determined for the case of MR = 1. The idler optical powers at the output of the DeMUX as well as the performance of the extracted clock signals are given in Fig. 3. It shows that, in the range of low time jitter, the idler optical power is approximately proportional to the relative time delay (26 ps). The analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion voltages are obtained in the signal processing/ control unit, as also shown in Fig. 3. Although the idler voltage is not strictly proportional to the idler optical power due to the EDFA gain dependence on the input power and the signal processing in the DMM, a monotonically operating range of the TODL can be chosen at the relative time delay of 2.42.7 ps, corresponding to the idler voltage of 612 617 mV. The idler feedback control circuit will drive the TODL with the step of 0.1 ps when the feedback voltage is out of this range. Finally, the stable clock extraction in the FOPO with the idler feedback control circuit is demonstrated. Comparison experiments