Dec 7th 2011

The Optical
Communications Group

OPTCOM - Dipartimento di Elettronica Politecnico di Torino – Torino – Italy www.optcom.polito.it

The group consists of the following permanent staff

Pierluigi Poggiolini

Roberto Gaudino

Gabriella Bosco

Andrea Carena

Vittorio Curri

Valter Ferrero

The group laboratory is the PhotonLab

it is located at the ISMB

ISMB personnel routinely collaborates in experiments

TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 2

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 Main activities

Currently, the group is involved in the following ongoing

main research activities

ultra-high capacity coherent optical transmission systems

optical access (or “last-mile”) through passive optical networks
(PONs)

short-haul systems by means of plastic optical fibers (POFs)

Another research topic was addressed in the past and

might resume activity:

free-space optical transmission

ALL activities were and are both theoretical and experimental

TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 3

UHC coherent optical transmission systems

This research has been going on for 5 years in collaboration with

CISCO Photonics

We are currently negotiating the 6th contract in the series

In brief, optical transmission has recently started to become “radio-

like” with the advent of “coherent” receivers; for instance:

constellations up to 64QAM are being considered

nearly rectangular spectra with roll-off less than 5%

spectral efficiencies of up to 5 bit/s/Hz/polarization

However, rates and capacity are much higher than radio

Commercial today:

100 Gb/s per channel

100 channels per fiber

total 10 Tb/s per fiber, over multi-thousand km links
TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 4

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 Fiber attenuation vs. frequency

Attenuation [dB/km]
C-band
10
191-196 THz

1.0

0.2 [dB/km]
0.1

easy amplification
in this band
0.01

190 200 230 400

(visible threshold)

Frequency [THz]
Chapter 1: introduction to optical fiber
TLC group meeting communications 5

PM-QPSK

Current commercial systems use transmission of QPSK onto two
orthogonal polarizations (PM = “polarization multiplexing”)

These constellations can also be viewed as one overall

constellation of 16 points in a 4D space

EI x (t ) EI y (t )

10 11 10 11
E Rx (t ) ERy (t )

00 01 00 01

x̂ ŷ
polarization www.optcom.polito.it polarization
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 Scattering Diagrams – SMF fiber

after dual-stage
DSP equalizer, X-pol Y-pol
optimum launch
power

TRANSITIONS

BEST SAMPLING
INSTANT

TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 7

Coherent receiver enablers

Coherent systems have been made possible by ultra-fast ADCs

64 GS/s over 5 bits is the current state-of-the-art

After digital conversion, the four quadratures go to a DSP, but

demodulation problems are daunting:

phase and frequency locking

fiber dispersion compensation
(FIR filters with thousands of taps)

polarization locking and polarization effects compensation
(real-time 2x2 or “MIMO” adaptive FIR equalizer)

ML decision

All this is carried out over 64 GS/s x 4 signals, real time !

DSP is the real enabler and where most of the value currently is

TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 8

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 Electronic DSP Schematic

PM D/PDL/pol compensation
b1
CD freq

A/D conv, 2 samp/bit

sample rate halving

comp comp

Decision/CPE
b2
FIR mtx
electro-

FEC
optical b3
front-end CD freq
comp comp
FIR mtx b4

clock recovery frequency estimation

2.5 2.5 2. 5 2.5

2 2 2 2

1.5 1.5 1. 5 1.5

1 1 1 1

0.5 0.5 0. 5 0.5

0 0 0 0

-0.5 -0.5 -0. 5 -0.5

-1 -1 -1 -1

-1.5 -1.5 -1. 5 -1.5

-2 -2 -2 -2

-2.5 -2.5 -2. 5

-2 -1 0 1 2 -2. 5 -2 -1. 5 -1 -0. 5 0 0.5 1 1. 5 2 2.5 -2.5
-2 -1 0 1 2 -2 -1 0 1 2

TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 9

Collaboration

Call for collaboration and ideas

DSP is the focus

actual implementation issues and new algorithms are the key
aspects of the new CISCO project

extreme optimization of algorithms is a must

power consumption constraints are brutal

chip floor space is a critical problem

still, algorithms must be highly effective…

algorithms could be critically revisited, also in view of the
use of higher-order constellations than QPSK

are there any “smarter” techniques to do better what
needs to be done?

any exotic modulation/coding techniques that comes to mind?

Any cooperation on any aspect of this research by any

TLC group member is very welcome !
TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 10

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FECs are also important

current standard is concatenated Reed-Solomon with 7%
overhead and 4e-3 BER threshold

LDPC hard decision with 20% OH and 1.5e-2 BER threshold are
now commercial but not yet used in systems

soft codes are being investigated
interested?

Experimental work is ongoing

OptCom/ISMB “crew” currently at work in CISCO Photonics to
implement:

200 channels, 125 Gb/s per channel, PM-16QAM

nearly rectangular spectra, spectral efficiency above 7 bit/s/Hz

total net capacity 20 Tb/s, over 1,000 km distance

DSP is done off-line…

Any interest, ideas ?
TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 11

Forward-looking topics

Standard fibers have two independent “channels”, that is the two

polarizations

New fibers are being experimented with that have several

independent “channels” (6 or more) using multiple orthogonal
“modes” and the two polarizations

signals are launched on the orthogonal “channels”

they arrive at the receiver mixed, but in an invertible way

NxN MIMO theory appears to apply here

anything else comes to mind ????

anyone wants to join on the study of these next-
generation exotic systems?

TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 12

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The OptCom group expertise is strong on fiber
propagation issues

the actual limitation in these systems is fiber non-
linearity

we recently published a new model for non-linear
propagation which is simple and accurate

we derived analytical “capacity” formulas for the
non-linear fiber channel (sort of a non-linear
Shannon limit)

Problems pretty much solved for conventional
fibers but quite open for multi-mode exotic fibers

Anyone interested?
TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 13

Dec 7th 2011

Activities on short reach optical

communications:

POF: Plastic Optical Fibers

PON: Passive Optical Networks

Politecnico di Torino

OPTCOM - Dipartimento di Elettronica Politecnico di Torino – Torino – Italy www.optcom.polito.it

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 POF: Plastic Optical Fibers

Optical fibers for ultra low-cost short
distance comunications

Coordinator of two consecutive STREP
projects (POF-ALL e POF-PLUS) 2006-2011.
Topics:

Home networking, industrial automation,
automotive

We developed an ad-hoc PHY for Gigabit
Ethernet over POF on a FPGA platform

FEC

Adaptive equalizer

Clock recovery

Framing and Ethernet interfacing
TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 15

POF: Plastic Optical Fibers

POF-PLUS final demo (Spring 2011)

ROUTER TESTER
(or 1000 Base-T
compatible device) Gigabit Ethernet Port
Gigabit Ethernet Port (RJ-45 interface)
(RJ-45 interface)

Clock recovery
module A 3PICs RX

A nti-aliasing
4QW RC-LED filter

50m SI-POF

A nti-aliasing
FPGA SLA VE filter FPGA MA STER
Fixed Clock
A 3PICs RX 4QW RC-LED
(FIRECOMMS)

Proprietary PCS and PMD Throughput: Full-Rate

sublayers
Latency: <30µs
PCS: scrambler+RS FEC
Optical Margin: 6dB
PMD: FFE+DFE

TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 16

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 PON: Passive Optical Networks

NG-PON2: next-generation optical access networks for
aggregate bit rates higher than 10 Gbit/s

Advanced transmission and access techniques
required (pure On-Off modulation and TDMA are not
sufficient to meet new demands)

WDM-PON ??

FDMA or OFDMA PON ??

Coherent PON ??

DSP at the physical layer

will be required

TLC group meeting www.optcom.polito.it 17