IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 11, NO.

9, SEPTEMBER 1999

1171

Compensation of Chromatic Dispersion Effects in Microwave/Millimeter-Wave Optical Systems Using Four-Wave-Mixing Induced in Dispersion-Shifted Fibers
F. Ramos, J. Marti, and V. Polo
Abstract The authors report theoretical and experimental results on the compensation of chromatic dispersion effects in microwave/millimeter-wave optical systems employing four-wave mixing (FWM) induced in dispersion-shifted ber (DSF). The technique is based on generating a phase-conjugated wave by means of FWM in a 12.7-km-long DSF placed at the midspan of the ber-optic link. The experimental results show that by using FWM a complete compensation of the electrical carrier suppression effect in a 50-km standard single-mode-ber optic link is achieved. Index Terms Analog optical systems, carrier suppression, chromatic dispersion, dispersion-shifted ber, four-wave mixing, optical-phase conjugation.

Fig. 1. Experimental setup of the DSF-based OPC compensation system.

I. INTRODUCTION

ICROWAVE/MILLIMETER-WAVE radio over ber transmission systems are nding an increasing role in broad-band wireless access networks [1]. In these networks, numerous base stations with reduced optoelectronic devices are optically fed from a control station forming a cluster. The size (area) of the clusters mainly depends on the frequencylength product of the ber-optic links. These systems usually operate near 1550 nm to benet from the use of erbium-doped ber ampliers (EDFA) to compensate for optical losses. However, chromatic dispersion effects severely limit the frequency-length product of the ber links mainly due to the well-known electrical carrier suppression effect [2]. Several approaches to overcome this effect have been demonstrated such as the use of chirped ber gratings (CFs) [3], carriersuppressed modulation techniques [4], and optical single sideband modulation (SSB) [5]. However, the CFG approach does not exactly compensate for chromatic dispersion effects in the presence of ber-induced self-phase modulation (SPM), and the other two techniques require a ne adjustment and stability of the bias voltage applied to the modulator or the phase of the modulating signals, respectively, both approaches being frequency dependent. Moreover, the feasibility of
Manuscript received March 29, 1999; revised May 21, 1999. This work was supported by the Spanish Research Commission (CICYT) under Project TIC96-0611 and by Photonetics under an EDFA loan. The work of F. Ramos was supported by the Valencian Regional Government under an FPI Grant. The authors are with ETSI Telecomunicacion, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, 46022 Valencia, Spain. Publisher Item Identier S 1041-1135(99)06845-7.

using optical-phase conjugation (OPC) to compensate for the ber-induced nonlinear distortion in CATV networks and microwave analog systems was previously outlined in [6] and [7]. The advantage of this technique with respect to others is that it also reduces the effect of ber-induced SPM [8], and does not impose stringent conditions to the modulating signal as SSB. As shown in [7], this technique has low sensitivity to variations in the optimum second span ber length. Therefore, the optical-phase conjugator (OPC) can be placed at a common emplacement (control station) and shared between many base stations placed at different distances from the control station. The rst ber span of the OPC system would be the link between the central station and this control station. Experimental results of fading-free ber-optic transport of a millimeter-wave signal at 60 GHz employing a semiconductor optical amplier (SOA)-based phase conjugator have been presented in [9]. Although the SOA-based conjugator provides a larger conversion efciency, the DSF-based conjugator allows a larger input signal power without distortion, and therefore a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is achieved [10]. In this letter, theoretical and experimental results on the compensation of chromatic dispersion effects in microwave/ millimeter-wave optical systems employing DSF-based FWM are presented. The results show that the chromatic dispersion effects are fully overcome in a 50-km SSMF optic link using a 12.7-km-long DSF placed at the midspan. II. EXPERIMENT The experimental arrangement used to demonstrate the compensation of the carrier suppression effect by means of FWM is depicted in Fig. 1. A 20-GHz lightwave component analyzer (LCA) operating in the electrooptical (E/O) mode is used to measure the electrical transfer function of the overall

10411135/99$10.00 1999 IEEE

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IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 11, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 1999

Fig. 2. Optical spectrum at the output of the DSF.

Fig. 3. Simulation (lines) and experimental (symbols) results of the normalized RF detected power for a 50-km optical SSMF span with FWM (solid line and black circles) and without FWM (dashed line and white circles).

system. The radio frequency (RF) port of a MachZehnder electrooptical modulator (MZ-EOM) is driven by the amplied RF sweep output of the analyzer. A tunable laser operating at 1551 nm provides the optical carrier. The MZ-EOM output with an optical power of 0 dBm is launched into 25 km of standard single-mode ber (SSMF). To compensate for the chromatic dispersion effects of the rst 25-km SSMF span a DSF-based OPC is placed at the midspan of the optical ber link. The OPC converts the input signal into a phase conjugated replica by means of FWM through 12.7 km of DSF. The pump laser has an optical power of 3 dBm and is tuned at the zero-dispersion wavelength of the DSF (1550 nm). To avoid stimulated Brillouin scattering, the pump laser is operated at the low-coherence mode (linewidth of about 30 MHz). The pump wave and the transmitted wave are combined and amplied to induce nonlinear effects in the DSF. The same polarization state for the two waves is achieved by using a polarization controller (PC). The optical spectrum at the output of the DSF was measured with a 0.08-nm resolution optical spectrum analyzer, as shown in Fig. 2. A phase conjugated replica of the input signal at a wavelength of 1549 nm as well as undesired FWM product at 1552 nm may be observed in Fig. 2. A conversion loss of about 25 dB is obtained from Fig. 2. The phase conjugation efciency is inversely proportional to the pump power and is also dependent on the DSF length, having an optimum at a ber length of about [11], where is the DSF absorption coefcient. An dB/km @ 1550 for the DSF used in our experiments gives an optimum ber length of 17.4 km (a little longer than our 12.7-km-long DSF). The conjugated signal is now ltered and amplied up to 0 dBm to be further transmitted through the second 25km SSMF span. The propagation through this second ber span compensates for the chromatic dispersion accumulated at the output of the rst ber span [8]. Finally, the output of the optical ber is photodetected, and the overall system frequency response measured. A calibration was previously done by connecting the output of the MZ-EOM directly to the optical input of the analyzer to correct the frequency rolloff introduced by the MZ-EOM, the electrical amplier, and the photodetector.

III. RESULTS

AND

DISCUSSION

The simulation results on the normalized RF detected power for 50 km of SSMF were obtained using the same system model described in [7], as shown in Fig. 3, in the cases with FWM (solid line) and without FWM (dashed line). The experimental results obtained with FWM (black circles) and without FWM (white circles) are also depicted in Fig. 3, showing an excellent agreement between simulation and experimental results. In Fig. 3, it can be seen that the dispersion-induced power penalty is almost fully mitigated when employing DSFbased FWM. The frequency response with FWM is nearly at with a variation of less than 2 dB. We attribute this ripple to the effect of harmonics generated by the MZ-EOM due to the high modulation index used in the experiment (the electrical power at the RF port of the MZ-EOM was 10 dBm). The nonlinear transfer function of the modulator and the distortion introduced by the electrical amplier generated a measured second- and third-order harmonic levels at the output of the MZ-EOM of 30 and 43 dBc, respectively, for a half-wave dc-voltage of the modulator of 9 V and a modulating frequency of 2 GHz. The inuence of SPM on the measurements was negligible due to the low optical power at the input of each ber span (0 dBm). Despite the frequency limitation of the LCA (20 GHz) used in the measurements, the study was extended to millimeterwave optical systems. Simulation results of the power penalty of a 28-GHz system with and without OPC are depicted in Fig. 4. The power penalty is here dened as the inverse of the normalized RF detected power for a given link length and for a frequency of 28 GHz. In Fig. 4, it may be observed that when no FWM is induced the chromatic dispersion severely limits the maximum link length, whereas when generating FWM the 1-dB penalty point is displaced from about 2 km to distances in excess of 50 km. The ripples shown in the simulation results with OPC are due to the high optical power at the input of each SSMF span. We have assumed an optical transmitter output power of 13 dBm to show the effects of SPM in the OPC equalization approach. It should be pointed out that the chromatic dispersion effects are fully mitigated by means of OPC, but the effects of the interplay between chromatic dispersion

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RAMOS et al.: COMPENSATION OF CHROMATIC DISPERSION EFFECTS IN MICROWAVE/MILLIMETER-WAVE OPTICAL SYSTEMS

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in externally modulated microwave or millimeter-wave radio over ber systems. However, the application of OPC in analog systems imposes some constraints not considered in conventional digital optical transmission. Although the SNR achieved with actual phase conjugators [10] is sufcient (if we employ modulation schemes different to AM-VSB modulation [7]), there is an additional requirement on the linearity of the conjugator device for application in microwave/millimeterwave optical systems. As explained in [10], the DSF-based OPC is more linear than the SOA-based OPC, which is desirable in analog optical systems. REFERENCES
Fig. 4. Power penalty as a function of the link length in a 28-GHz optical system with and without OPC. The optical power at the ber input is 13 dBm. Dashed line: no compensation. Solid line: Compensation employing the OPC technique.

and SPM through the optical link remain and only a reduction of these effects is achieved. Thus, the ber-induced SPM give rise to ripples in the system response, which can be attenuated by reducing the input optical power. Furthermore, this effect might also be noticed in the results depicted in Fig. 3, but in this case the optical power (0 dBm) was too small to induce signicant SPM. For simulation purposes we have assumed an ideal OPC (only spectral inversion), without considering other effects such as amplied spontaneous emission (ASE) noise, or SPM and cross-phase modulation (XPM) generated during the propagation through the DSF, which may be important at high optical powers at the DSF input (SPM-XPM effects can be neglected in DSF-based OPC for input powers up to 16 dBm [11]). IV. CONCLUSION The use of DSF-based FWM to compensate for chromatic dispersion effects in microwave/millimeter-wave optical systems has been proposed and demonstrated. The experimental results show a complete mitigation of the dispersion-induced carrier suppression effect up to 20 GHz in a 50-km SSMF span. Therefore, this technique can be used in an efcient way to compensate for chromatic dispersion effects that appear

[1] J. OReilly and P. M. Lane, Remote delivery of video services using mm-waves and optics, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 12, pp. 369375, Feb. 1994. [2] H. Schmuck, Comparison of optical millimeter-wave system concepts with regard to chromatic dispersion, Electron. Lett., vol. 31, no. 21, pp. 18481849, 1995. [3] J. Marti, J. M. Fuster, and R. I. Laming, Experimental reduction of chromatic dispersion effects in lightwave microwave/millimeter-wave transmission using tapered linearly chirped ber gratings, Electron. Lett., vol. 33, no. 13, pp. 11701171, 1997. [4] J. M. Fuster, J. Marti, and J. L. Corral, Experimental reduction of chromatic dispersion effects in electro-optical up-converted millimeterwave ber-optic links, presented at the Optical Fiber Communication Conf. (OFC98), paper WM20. [5] G. H. Smith, D. Novak, and Z. Ahmed, Novel technique for generation of optical SSB with carrier using a single MZM to overcome ber chromatic dispersion, Electron. Lett., vol. 33, no. 13, pp. 7475, 1997. [6] J. Marti and F. Ramos, Compensation for dispersion-induced nonlinear distortion in subcarrier systems using optical-phase conjugation, Electron. Lett., vol. 33, no. 9, pp. 792794, 1997. [7] F. Ramos and J. Marti, Compensation for ber-induced composite second-order distortion in externally modulated lightwave AM-SCM systems using optical-phase conjugation, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 16, pp. 13871392, Aug. 1998. [8] S. Watanabe and M. Shirasaki, Exact compensation for both chromatic dispersion and Kerr effect in a transmission ber using optical phase conjugation, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 14, pp. 243248, Mar. 1996. [9] K-I. Kitayama and H. Sotobayashi, Fading-free ber-optic transport of 60 GHz-optical DSB signal by using in-line phase conjugator, in Proc. Optical Fiber Communication Conf. (OFC99), pp. 6466, paper WD4-1. [10] H. Geiger, S. Y. Set, R. I. Laming, M. J. Cole, and L. Reekie, Comparison of DSF- and SOA-based phase conjugators employing noise-suppressing ber, in Proc. Optical Fiber Communication Conf. (OFC97), pp. 150151, paper WH7. [11] W. Wu, P. Yeh, and S. Chi, Phase conjugation by four-wave mixing in single-mode bers, IEEE Photonics Technol. Lett., vol. 6, pp. 14481450, Dec. 1994.

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