Optical Communications

In recent years, several New England projects have promoted professional development and curriculum design in optics and photonics. Funded in part by the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF), these projects have prepared middle and high school teachers, college faculty and career counselors from more than 100 New England institutions to introduce fiber optics, telecommunications and photonics technology education. Four of these projects will be discussed here: (1) The New England Board of Higher Education's (NEBHE) Fiber Optics Technology Education Project, (FOTEP) was designed to teach fiber optics theory and to provide laboratory experiences at the secondary and postsecondary levels. (2) Springfield Technical Community College's Northeast Center for Telecommunications Technologies (NCTT) is developing curricula and instructional materials in lightwave, networking and wireless telecommunications technologies. (3) The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics project ComTech developed a 12-week, hands-on curriculum and teaching strategies for middle and high school science and technology teachers in telecommunications and focused on optical communication (fiber optics). (4) NEBHE's project PHOTON is preparing middle, secondary and postsecondary instructors to introduce theory and laboratory experiences in photonics, including geometric and wave optics as well as principles of lasers and photonics applications.

In a passive optical network with a hybrid wavelength division multiplexing time division multiple-access scheme, implementing reconfigurable wavelength assignment is complex; hence the need to determine the conditions for which the capacity improvements justify requiring reconfigurability over adopting a more inexpensive fixed wavelength assignment. Fixed and reconfigurable approaches to wavelength assignment are modeled and evaluated under nonstationary traffic conditions. The performance improvement is obtained in terms of bit rate gain relative to the nominal bandwidth and depends on the number of wavelength channels as well as the magnitude of the load offered by the optical network units. In addition, frame delay and frame loss in relation to the bit rate performance are obtained for Pareto and exponentially distributed traffic. Simulations show that when introducing reconfigurability, typical peak bit rate gains with respect to the fixed case are 17%, and maxima of 175% are potentially possible when traffic demands are particularly uneven.

Complementing wireless radio networks with free-space optics (FSO) achieves high data rates by modulating radio subcarriers over an optical carrier without expensive optical fiber cabling, enabling a pervasive platform for reaching underserved areas. In this paper, we review the main features of FSO for terrestrial and inter-satellite communications. Simulations of 1 Gbps data transmission through FSO links in both terrestrial and inter-satellite communications have been investigated to highlight potential atmospheric challenges in FSO.

International Journal on Information Theory (IJIT) will provide an excellent international forum for sharing knowledge and results in theory, methodology and applications of Information Theory. Authors are solicited to contribute to the journals by submitting articles that illustrate research results, projects, surveying works and industrial experiences that describe significant advances in the areas of Information Theory and applications.

A photonic crystal fiber in square lattice architecture is numerically investigated and proposed for broadband dispersion compensation in optical transmission system. Simulation results reveal that it is possible to obtain an ultra-high negative dispersion of about −571.7 to −1889.7 (ps/nm.km) in the wavelength range of 1340 nm to 1640 nm. Experimentally it is demonstrated that the design fiber covers a high birefringence of order 4.74×10

In this paper investigation has been done on two different photodiodes PIN and APD for use as a receiver in free space fiber optical link. Eye Diagrams have been used to evaluate value of Q- factor in each and every case. Gaussian pulse modulation format has been used in this analysis work. It is clear from the findings of this analysis that value of Q-factor is maximum when APD has been used as the receiving photodiode at 1550nm wavelength and minimum when PIN diode has been used as receiving photodiode at 1550nm wavelength.

At present, system design usually assumes the Kolmogorov model of refractive index fluctuation spectra in the atmosphere. However, experimental data indicates that in the atmospheric boundary layer and at higher altitudes the turbulence can be different from Kolmogorov's type. In optical communications, analytical models of mean irradiance and scintillation index have been developed for a traditional Kolmogorov spectrum and must be revised for non-Kolmogorov turbulence. The image quality (resolution, MTF, etc.) is essentially dependent on the properties of turbulent media. Turbulence MTF must be generalized to include non-Kolmogorov statistics. The change in fluctuation correlations of the refractive index can lead to a considerable change in both the MTF form and the resolution value. In this work, on the basis of measurements and model calculations, the influence of non-Kolmogorov turbulence on imaging and communications through the atmosphere is estimated for different scenarios of vertical and slant-path propagation. The atmospheric model of an arbitrary (non-Kolmogorov) spectrum is applied to estimate the statistical quantities associated with optical communication links (e.g., scintillation and fading statistics) and imaging system. Implications can be significant for optical communication, imaging through the atmosphere, and remote sensing.

As multiple accessing technique that can be used to provide access to multiple users to transmit data to same channel simultaneously without any scheduling or delay in transmission, Optical Code Division Multiple Access (OCDMA) has been an alluring for the past few decades. All users share all bandwidth simultaneously and access the network asynchronously. To provide access to multiple users simultaneously, many coding techniques to increase possible users and improve performance has been analyzed for OCDMA systems. In this paper, many different proposed methods of coding are reviewed. Performance, cardinality and capacity of these codes are discussed. Significance of introducing dimensions in optical code is also be discussed.