Breaking the Tbit/s Barrier:
HIGHER BANDWIDTH
OPTICAL PROCESSING
Jochen Schröder, Trung D. Vo,
Yvan Paquot and Benjamin J. Eggleton
The growing demand for broadband
communications has inspired many
approaches to increasing capacity. Our
recent work shows that combining linear
and nonlinear optical signal processing
can overcome some of the challenges
faced by high-symbol-rate signals.
32 | OPN Optics & Photonics News
O ur ability to send large amounts of data through a
single optical iber has revolutionized the way we
communicate. Ever since Charles Kao predicted
that light could propagate through a single mode iber at a
total loss of less than 20 dB/km, optical iber communications
has taken on an increasingly important role in our society.
Optical ibers are now ubiquitous, and they form the backbone
of all modern telecommunication networks. It’s no wonder
that Kao was awarded a portion of the 2009 Nobel Prize in
physics for “groundbreaking achievements concerning the
transmission of light in ibers for optical communication.”
www.osa-opn.org

Today, everyone transmits and receives data via optical
ibers several times a day, be it when searching the Internet,
watching a video online, chatting via an instant messaging
program or talking to someone on the phone. he data that
reach us through wireless networks on our laptop or cell phone
or through a copper cable to our desktop computer traversed
an optical iber.
Despite its relatively long history, iber telecommunica-
tions research continues at a breathtaking pace. his research
is largely driven by the increasing demand for bandwidth. In
the last ive years, data traic has increased eightfold, and it
Eggleton (left),
Schröder and
Paquot in the
CUDOS Tbit/s lab
at the University
of Sydney.
Courtesy of the University of Sydney
is predicted to quadruple in the next ive years and to reach
almost a zettabyte annually in 2015.
Increasing capacity
Researchers are using multiple approaches to increasing optical
iber capacity in order to keep up with the soaring demand for
broadband communications. heir techniques include increas-
ing the number of wavelength channels that carry data, or
so-called wavelength division multiplexing (WDM); increas-
ing the number of bits of a single symbol, for example, via
coherent modulation formats that modulate both phase and
March 2012 | 33
1047-6938/12/03/32/6-$15.00 ©OSA
 Researchers from Denmark, Germany and our own team in Sydney,
Australia, are now routinely operating at symbol rates of 1.28 Tbaud.
amplitude of a signal, including quadrature amplitude modula-
tion (QAM) or quadrature phase shift keying; using multicore
or multimode ibers, denoted as space division multiplexing
techniques; and increasing the symbol rate of the signal via
time division multiplexing (TDM). Typically, several of these
techniques are combined into one approach.
Despite the enormous progress being made in coherent
communication systems and the associated advanced modu-
lation formats, there is still great interest in enhancing the
symbol rates of signals. he challenges and results of raising
the bit-rate of a signal by increasing the symbol rate are of great
interest to the optics and photonics community.
he symbol rate in optical systems is often measured as the
number of laser pulses per second that carry the information
(measured in baud). It difers from the bit-rate by the number
of bits in one symbol. Our recent work shows that combining
linear and nonlinear optical signal processing can overcome
some of the challenges faced by high-symbol-rate signals.
State-of-the-art telecommunication systems operate at a
symbol rate of 40 Gbaud, or 40 Giga symbols per second.
While there are some commercial oferings that have a sym-
bol rate of 56 Gbaud, and research has shown electronically
generated signals of 160 Gbaud, the maximum symbol rate
that can be generated electronically is ultimately limited by
electronic bandwidths.
herefore, researchers have adopted optical time division
multiplexing (OTDM) as an all-optical method for generat-
ing ultra-high baud rate signals. Instead of diferent signal
[ Single channel bit-rate research: The last 25 years ]
10
8 to be kept low, and alignment of the multiplexing stages must
Bit-rate [Tb/s]
6
4
2
0
1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010
Year
Research was irst focused on increasing the bit rate of 640
Gbaud signals via polarization multiplexing and high eficiency
modulation formats. The current record for single channel bit-
rate is a remarkable 10.2 Tbit/s for a polarization multiplexed
1.28 Tbaud quadrature amplitude modulation signal.
34 | OPN Optics & Photonics News
channels occupying various wavelength regions as in WDM,
OTDM allows for diferent channels to occupy varying time
slots. High-symbol-rate communications was pioneered by
Masataka Nakazawa, who generated signals at 640 Gbaud in
the late 1990s.
We have recently seen a renewed interest in high-symbol-
rate signals, with several groups competing for the highest data
rate in a single channel. Researchers from Denmark, Germany
and our own team in Sydney, Australia, are now routinely
operating at symbol rates of 1.28 Tbaud. Not too long ago, we
saw the generation of a 10.2 Tbit/s single channel data rate by
combining a 1.28 Tbaud symbol rate with 16 QAM modula-
tion and polarization multiplexing.
Challenges
he generation of high-symbol-rate OTDM signals is rela-
tively straightforward by selectively delaying, combining and
temporally interleaving lower-symbol-rate signals using delay
lines and couplers. However, to prevent adjacent symbols from
overlapping, it is important to have suiciently short symbol
duration. his is why most OTDM experiments use pulsed or
so-called return-to-zero signals, and it is the cause of many of
the challenges facing high-symbol-rate communications.
hese challenges are manifold. he irst is the generation of
suiciently short pulses. OTDM signals typically use pulses
from an actively mode-locked laser with a pulse width of 1-2 ps.
However, the symbol period of a 1.28-Tbaud signal is only
about 780 fs. hus, much shorter pulses with widths of less
than 400 fs are required to avoid pulse overlap. he most com-
mon approach for generating such ultra-short pulse trains is via
nonlinear compression of the picosecond pulses.
Another diiculty is that the requirements and tolerances
on the pulse trains and the multiplexing stages become much
more stringent. With decreasing pulse width, timing-jitter has
be tightly controlled.
A third hurdle is the propagation and transmission of high-
symbol-rate signals, which are inherently much more suscep-
tible to transmission impairments. Speciically, group velocity
dispersion must be accurately compensated to reliably recover
the data signal. At bandwidths of 640 GHz and above, higher-
order dispersion in the transmission ibers plays an increasingly
2012 strong role. herefore, it is necessary to not only compensate
for second-order dispersion (b₂) but also for third- (b₃), fourth-
(b₄) and possibly ifth-order (b₅) dispersion.
he second-order dispersion length—or the length after
which a Gaussian pulse is broadened by a factor of two—is
on the order of several meters for a 300 fs pulse; similarly,
the third-order dispersion length is on the order of a hundred
www.osa-opn.org
meters. Because dispersion causes signiicant distortion of the [ All-optical radio-frequency-spectrum analyzer ]
signal, very accurate compensation is crucial. his is further
complicated by the fact that temperature-induced dispersion Signal Nonlinear
luctuations are strong enough to signiicantly impair the waveguide
CW probe
transmitted signals. A real-world link must therefore not only
be accurately compensated but also able to track and compen-
@ Waveguide input
sate for luctuations. his applies to long-distance links as well
as medium- and short-distance links of a few hundred meters. Signal
intensity
he underlying challenge of ultra-high-baud-rate com-
CW
munication is iguring out how to measure and manipulate intensity
ultra-broadband signals to detect and adjust multiplexing CW
stage misalignment or to accurately track dispersion. Tra- phase
ditional electronic measurement techniques do not possess Time Power
enough bandwidth to measure these signals. Demultiplex- Cross-phase
ing measurement and subsequent re-multiplexing would be modulation
energy-intensive and costly. Nonlinear optical processing @ Waveguide output
techniques promise to overcome the bandwidth limitations
imposed by electronics, and nonlinearity-based monitoring Signal
intensity
techniques have been the subject of extensive research. Fiber
Bragg gratings, a common tool for tunable dispersion com- CW
intensity RF
pensation, are similarly limited in their maximum bandwidth. spectrum
CW
hey cannot be used for signals with bandwidths above a few phase
hundred GHz. Time Power
An all-optical radio-frequency-spectrum analyzer can be
created by co-propagating a continuous wave probe beam with
Impairment monitoring and compensation the signal under test (SUT) through a nonlinear waveguide. The
of ultra-broadband signals optical spectrum of the probe after the waveguide as measured
on an optical spectrum analyzer (OSA) is proportional to the
Our work combines nonlinear photonic chip-based opti-
radio frequency or power spectrum of the SUT.
cal processing for impairment monitoring with linear light
manipulation, based on spectral pulse shaping, for impairment
compensation of ultra-broadband telecommunication signals.
For many applications, it is desirable to characterize optical he phase modulation generates new frequency components
signals with high temporal resolution and low acquisition time. around the spectrum of the cw probe. he optical spectrum
Arguably the most common high-temporal-resolution pulse of the broadened probe is proportional to the RF spectrum of
characterization technique is the second-harmonic generation the signal; thus, we are able to measure the RF spectrum of
(SHG) autocorrelator. Most optical laboratories that use short the signal with a simple optical spectrum analyzer. Because the
pulses will have at least one of these devices. However, the Kerr-nonlinearity is virtually instantaneous, the main limita-
acquisition time of SHG autocorrelators is comparatively tion on the bandwidth of the all-optical RFSA is dispersion
slow. hey are also bulky and hardly integrable. Furthermore, inside the waveguide and probe-signal walk-of. Dorrer’s origi-
they tend to contain moving parts and require frequent read- nal implementation, based on a dispersion-shifted iber, was
justment. All of these characteristics make them unsuitable for still bandwidth-limited to about 800 GHz. To create a truly
monitoring applications in optical networks. broadband RFSA, a highly nonlinear platform with negligible
he electronic radio-frequency-spectrum analyzer (RFSA) is dispersion is required.
a powerful diagnostic tool that is commonly used in telecom-
munications for characterizing signal quality. However, it is All-optical radio-frequency spectrum measurement
limited in bandwidth due to its electronic nature. Christopher We now have the potential to make very compact RFSAs with
Dorrer proposed a method of generating the radio-frequency unprecedented bandwidths. his is due to recent progress on
(RF) spectrum of a broadband signal via all-optical means, photonic miniaturization and integration based on silicon
thus signiicantly improving on the bandwidth of electronic photonics or highly nonlinear glasses such as chalcogenide,
RFSAs. A broadband signal is copropagated with a continuous together with being able to precisely engineer the dispersion
wave (cw) probe through a nonlinear waveguide. he instan- of these devices.
taneous intensity of the signal will modulate the phase of the he large refractive index of silicon photonics and chalco-
probe wave via cross-phase modulation induced by the Kerr- genides allow for the creation of waveguides and nanowires
nonlinearity inside the waveguide. with highly conined light ields. he increased intensity and

March 2012 | 35
 The extremely lexible phase manipulation capabilities enable us to
compensate for multiple orders of dispersion via simple phase iltering.
the high Kerr nonlinear index of these materials combine to
create a very large nonlinear parameter, enabling large phase-
shifts on lengths scales of a few centimeters. Having the ability
to engineer the waveguide dimensions to ofset large material
dispersion has proven crucial for enabling broadband nonlinear
processing. he combination of very low dispersion with the
centimeter-scale device length greatly reduces probe-signal walk-
of leading to measurement bandwidths of about three THz.
he elegance of the all-optical RF spectrum measurement,
apart from the immense bandwidth, derives from its ability
to perform further processing on the RF spectrum via simple
optical iltering. We can easily isolate speciic signal parameters
to measure dispersion or optical signal-to-noise ratio by only
measuring some RF regions of interest. Furthermore, photonic
2-D LCOS array
Input/output
on gra ting iber array
Dif fracti
Channel bandwidth
Polarization
diversity optics
Imaging
optics
Imaging
Programmable mirror
optical processor
A programmable optical processor, or spectral pulse shaper,
is an extremely powerful linear optical processing device. It
can perform nearly arbitrary phase and intensity iltering on
the spectrum of an input light ield. The operating principle
of the device that our group uses is as follows: Light enters
the spectral pulse shaper via an input/output iber array. It is
imaged onto a 2-D liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) display via
a diffraction grating, which angularly disperses the light so
the horizontal axis of the LCoS is occupied by the C-band.
Along the vertical axis, the light intensity has an approxi-
mately Gaussian distribution due to diffraction.
The phase modulation capabilities of the LCoS device
enable extensive phase and amplitude iltering and beam
steering operations. The respective wavelength can be
directed to a chosen output port to enable wavelength
switching by applying a phase modulation to each verti-
cal pixel column on the LCoS. Equivalently, the wavelength
channel can be attenuated by misaligning from the ideal out-
put coupling condition. Similarly, a horizontal phase modula-
tion will delect the light along a slightly different path to the
output iber, causing a delay. Bandpass iltering is enabled
by simply using different horizontal regions of the LCoS.
36 | OPN Optics & Photonics News
integration allows us to combine the nonlinear propagation,
optical iltering and the (slow) photodiodes for power measure-
ments onto a single device. One could thus create a perfor-
mance monitor on a chip.
Multi-order dispersion monitor and automatic
compensator for Tbaud signals
he igure on the facing page illustrates the all-optically
measured RF spectrum of a 1.28-Tbaud on-of keying signal
afected by diferent amounts of multi-order dispersion. We
would also like to point out the exceptional bandwidth of this
RF spectrum measurement—it exhibits frequency components
well above one THz. Second, it is evident that the power of
the 1.28 THz tone, or the fundamental of the symbol rate, is a
single parameter indicator of the signal quality; it is therefore
possible to monitor and optimize signal quality by iltering and
measuring the 1.28 THz tone power.
Because the power of the clock-rate tone in the RF-spectrum
can be used as the sole indicator of the signal quality, it can
also be used for a single parameter optimization in our disper-
sion compensation device. he monitor picks up when the sig-
nal quality, measured by iltering the clock tone power, drops
due to dispersion luctuations (induced here by our dispersion
simulator). Signal quality is automatically recovered by adjusting
the compensator accordingly.
We take advantage of this to implement an automatic
multi-order dispersion compensator for ultra-broadband
OTDM signals via single parameter optimization. he OTDM
signal is generated in a typical fashion, based on compressed
mode-locked laser pulses and interferometric multiplexing
stages, to create the 1.28 Tbaud signal.
he automatic compensator has two key components: 1) a
combination of the photonic-chip performance monitor based
on optical nonlinearity; and 2) a programmable optical proces-
sor that uses spectral pulse-shaping for fast and reconigurable
arbitrary multi-order dispersion compensation.
A feedback loop controls the optical processor adjusting the
dispersion compensation for optimum signal quality.
Spectral pulse shapers are extremely powerful linear optical
processing devices that allow for the control of spectral phase
and the intensity of an incoming light ield. hey were pio-
neered in the 1990s by Andrew Weiner. Some key advantages
of our device, which is based on a commercially available wave-
length selective switch platform, is its very low insertion loss
and relatively fast update time. hese are central requirements
for our monitoring application.
he device enables direct manipulation of the spectral phase
and amplitude of an incoming light ield via a combination
of a 4-f imaging system with a spatial light modulator (SLM).
www.osa-opn.org
he 4-f system includes two difraction gratings [ Ultra-broadband RF measurements & dispersion compensation ]
that angularly disperse the wavelength spectrum
of the light along one spatial axis of the SLM. 40 β =+1.5
2
β =+1.5
3
β =+1.5
4
By controlling the pixel values of the SLM at the
20
center of the imaging system, one can directly β =+1.0 β =+1.0 β =+0.5
2 3 4

Power [dBm]
manipulate individual spectral components of 0
the ield. his enables versatile manipulation of
−20 β =+0.5 β =+0.5 β =+0.25
the spectral phase and amplitude of the light and 2 3 4

allows the dispersion, delay or arbitrary attenu- −40

β =0 β =0 β =0
ation proiles to be applied directly to the light 2,3,4 2,3,4 2,3,4
−60
passing through the device.
he extremely lexible phase manipulation 0 0.5 1 1.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 0 0.5 1
f [THz] f [THz] f [THz]
capabilities enable us to compensate for multiple
0
orders of dispersion via simple phase iltering. Our ∆β3=
−2
compensation algorithm takes advantage of the − 0.003

Tone power [dB]

fact that the quality factor of the signal is a single −4
β =0
scalar value (the 1.28 THz tone power) with a −6 2
β3=0
monotonically decreasing dependence on b₂, b₃ −8 β =0
4
∆β =
4
∆β =
2

and b₄ around the optimum. his allows for the −10 − 0.003 − 0.07
∆β =− 0.007
existence of a global optimum for the dispersion −12 3

∆β3=− 0.01
state, which can be found by running a scalar −14
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
optimization algorithm on the 3-D surface deined Time[s]
by the tone power. To implement this optimization
The strong distortive effect of dispersion on high-bandwidth single-channel
experimentally, we isolated the tone from the RF telecommunication signals can be readily observed using our photonic chip
spectrum by conducting optical iltering using a radio-frequency analyzer. These signals are affected by second- and higher-
combination of a iber Bragg grating and a tunable order dispersion (b2, b3, b4, …) after propagation through only short lengths of
thin-ilm ilter. We measured its power using a standard single mode iber.
relatively slow photodiode.
We used a second spectral pulse shaper to
change the dispersion at arbitrary points in time to simulate full potential of this linear-nonlinear processing combination
a realistic link that is exposed to environmental luctuations has not yet been fully exploited and that many more applica-
and thus dispersion luctuations. he ability of our system to tions will use this combination. t
automatically track dispersion variations is demonstrated on We thank our coworkers and collaborators who have greatly contributed
the bottom of the igure above, which depicts the tone power to the experiments presented here: Steve Madden, Jürgen Van Erps, Barry
over time. We see sharp drops in tone power when the disper- Luther-Davies, Mark Pelusi and Michaël Roelens. We would also like
sion is changed on the simulator. Subsequently, the compen- to acknowledge the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence,
sation algorithm kicks in and the tone power is recovered to Federation Fellowship and Linkage Schemes for financial support.
its initial value.
Jochen Schröder, Trung D. Vo, Yvan Paquot and Benjamin J. Eggleton
he recovery time for this experiment is on the order of (egg@physics.usyd.edu.au) are with the ARC Centre of Excellence
tens of seconds; however, this can be signiicantly improved by Member for Ultrahigh-bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems, Institute

further optimizing the compensation algorithm. It could be as
fast as a few hundred milliseconds (limited by the update time
of the spectral pulse shaper). Furthermore, the abrupt changes of
dispersion used in this model are worst-case scenario. In a real
link, dispersion luctuations are mainly induced by temperature
variations and we would observe a much slower change that
would be much more easily tracked by our system.
We believe that the tight integration of photonic-chip-
based all-optical signal monitoring with spectral pulse
shaping for signal manipulation holds great potential
for applications with bandwidth requirements exceeding
electronic limits. Such a combination can help to overcome
some of the fundamental challenges of high baud rate optical
telecommunications. Furthermore, we are convinced that the
of Photonics and Optical Science, school of physics at the University of
Sydney, Australia.
[ References and Resources ]
>> M. Nakazawa et al. Electron. Lett. 34, 907 (1998).
>> A.M. Weiner. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 71, 1929 (2000).
>> C. Dorrer and D.N. Maywar. J. Lightwave Technol. 22, 266 (2004).
>> M.A.F. Roelens et al. J. Lightwave Technol. 26, 73 (2008).
>> M. Pelusi et al. Nature Photon. 3, 139 (2009).
>> J. Van Erps et al. Opt. Express 18, 25415 (2010).
>> Y. Paquot et al. Opt. Express 19, 2512 (2011).
>> T. Richer et al. Optical Fiber Communication Conference, OSA
Technical Digest (CD), paper PDPA9 (2011).
>> Cisco Visual Networking Index: www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/
collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-
481360_ns827_Networking_Solutions_White_Paper.html

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