ICTON 2005 182 Th.A1.

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This material is based upon work supported by the Science Foundation Ireland under Grant No. 03/IN.1/1340
and the authors would like to thank IRCSET for a PhD scholarship.

0-7803-9236-1/05/$20.00 2005 IEEE
Optical Multiplexing for High Speed Systems
Andrew Ellis, Fatima Gunning, Tadhg Healy
Department of Physic, University College Corks and Tyndall National Institute,
Photonics Building, Tyndall National Institute, Lee Maltings, Prospect Row, Cork, Ireland
Tel: +353 21 490 4858, Fax: +353 21 490 4880, e-mail: andrew.ellis@ucc.ie
ABSTRACT
In this paper we will review the progress of optical multiplexing; in particular we will compare the well known
techniques of optical time domain multiplexing and wavelength division multiplexing, and introduce a new
technique (Coherent-WDM) which retains the advantages of both of these traditional technologies.
1. INTRODUCTION
It is well known that the telecommunications industry has experienced a remarkably constant increase in the
demand for capacity, with little evidence of saturation. With the exception of recent anomalies, installed capacity
and research results have tracked this demand. Cursory inspection of key published results in optical
transmission from 1984 onwards illustrate that the maximum reported bit rate distance product doubled every
year, outstripping the capabilities of electronics (doubling every 18 months) as early as 1991. It might be
expected that such growth in the underlying demand would inevitably lead to the eventual adoption of optical
multiplexing for use in point to point links; indeed the first live pilot trial of a commercial wavelength division
multiplexing (WDM) system in the UK occurred in 1998 [1].
Optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) was first demonstrated as early as 1968 [2], primarily as means
to increase the capacity of an optical link, with WDM mentioned as an interesting alternative. Technical progress
has continued, with the worlds first 40 Gbit/s experiments carried out using OTDM [3]. Experimental
demonstrations of WDM were carried out as early as 1977, primarily to mitigate limiting propagation effects
such as dispersion [4], an advantage maintained today, for example multi-Terabit/s transmission experiments [5].
From a commercial point of view, however, raw transmission capacity is often insufficient to justify
widespread deployment, with issues, such as resilience, redundancy and routing, having a significant impact on
network architectures. Trade offs between duplication of equipment to provide redundancy, the cost of such
equipment, and likely failure mechanisms, dominate resilience and redundancy requirements. Current trends
have seen networks evolve from N+1 redundancy, to protect against electronic component failure, to multiple
fibre rings and all optical mesh networks, providing protection against major cable cuts. A further key
technological aspect of such networks is related to the optimum switching granularity. Many studies have
addressed this issue at a given point in time, with a variety of forecasting scenarios. Fundamentally, however,
cost constraints demand limited number of routes serving a fixed or declining number of exchanges. Such
geographical and economic constraints dictate a switching granularity in an approximately fixed proportion of
the overall link capacity. Currently, optical add drop multiplexers (OADMs) and all optical cross connects
(OXCs) offer a routing granularity of the order of a single wavelength, and proposals exist to use this as the only
switching mechanism within a core network [6]. However, earlier work has already suggested that significant
cost savings may be achieved using band switching [7].
Optical multiplexing technology must address all of these, and many others, issues. In the presentation, we
will review the two dominant optical multiplexing strategies of the last century, namely WDM and OTDM, and
introduce a new and novel approach, which we call coherent WDM.
2. OPTICAL MULTIPLEXING
In general, optically multiplexed system comprises N independent data sources, a multiplexer, a demultiplexer
and N independent data receivers. For a WDM system, each channel is identified by a specific and, uniquely
defined wavelength, the transmitter comprising N lasers, each tuned precisely to the appropriate wavelength, and
corresponding demultiplexing filters at the receiver. For an OTDM system each channel is identified by
a specific and uniquely defined time slot, the transmitter comprising a single laser split into N copies, each
delayed precisely by appropriate time interval, and corresponding demultiplexing switches at the receiver.
In both cases the signals are added incoherently, since for a WDM system, independent lasers are used, and for
OTDM, independent fibre paths [8]. As a consequence of this, beat signals between channels which fall inside
the receiver bandwidth degrade the system performance.
Recently, phase preserving modulator arrays and wavelength conversion techniques [9, 10] have been
employed in OTDM systems, so that signals are added with known phases. This has allowed the generation of
spectrally efficient modulation formats, such as carrier suppressed return to zero [9] and various forms of
differential phase shift keying. It should be noted however, that due to the complexity of these techniques,
ICTON 2005 182a Th.A1.3

research is aimed at understanding the transmission effects for future electrically multiplexed systems, rather
than the development of commercial OTDM systems [10]. Now, whilst such high speed time division
multiplexed systems will provide the appropriate granularity for efficient all optical networking, the majority of
transmission impairments (such as group velocity dispersion, filter concatenation and polarisation mode
dispersion) have an increasingly significant impact as the signal bit rate is increased.
On the other hand, within WDM systems considerable recent progress has occurred in terms of optimising
the overall reach, repeater span, spectral efficiency and networking performance [11]. In order to simultaneously
attain all of these desirable features, complex transmitter structures are required in order to limit the spectral
extent of each WDM channel. This must be carried out in such a way as to minimise the sensitivity to the
impairments described above, as well as the impairments more detrimental to wavelength multiplexed systems
such as non linear crosstalk. To date WDM multiplexing remains a technique which minimises the spectral
overlap of each WDM signal in order to avoid coherent interference between uncorrelated channels.
3. COHERENT WDM
In this presentation we shall propose a new technique (which we call coherent WDM) to increase the spectral
density of NRZ binary coded signals in a single polarisation from 0.4 to 1 bit/s/Hz. This is achieved by
controlling interferometric cross talk within the transmitter, rather than avoiding it, analogously to the recent
enhancements to OTDM systems. By controlling the optical phase difference between adjacent channels
a deterministic interference pattern will be produced. In particular, if a comb of N wavelengths is produced, with
a frequency spacing f equal to the bit rate, the output signal resembles a pulse, which varies according to
sin
2
(Nft)/sin
2
(ft). This peak of the output signal will always occur at the same point within a bit slot, and by
correctly aligning the relative timing of data signal which independently modulate each comb line, the peak may
be aligned to the centre of the bit slot. The system is completed using optimised filters at the receiver to recover
the independent data channels. Since the Coherent WDM transmitter allows the use of interference effects to
increase the detected eye opening, the interference effects need not be entirely avoided considerably simplifying
the receiver optimisation. Significantly, the elimination of the transmitter pre-filter allows the use of narrower
filters at the receiver.
Full details of a typical Coherent WDM system will be presented at the conference, including experimental
results of the generation and detection of a 298 Gbit/s coherent WDM signal. Such signals offer a simple route to
a high spectral efficiency and include the some of the advantages of both time division multiplexed systems
(high bit rate per laser / switch-able channel) and wavelength division multiplexed systems (passive
demultiplexers and low symbol rate), with a simple integrated transmitter configuration similar to array
transmitters already reported for both WDM [13] and OTDM [9] systems.
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[12] A. Yariv, Optical Electronics, 3rd Edition, Holt Rinehart and Winston Inc, Orlando, Florida, 1985.