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Journal of Lightwave Technology

Homodyne optical coherent systems based on polarization modulation

S. Betti, Giancarlo De Marchis, Eugenio Iannone, P. Lazzaro

Published Jan 1, 1991• 18 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The first homodyne receiver for polarization modulated optical signals is proposed and analyzed. It is based on the detection at the receiver of the four quadratures that completely characterize the received optical field and on the estimation of the Stokes parameters starting from them. This allows homodyne detection to be carried out without phase locking the local oscillator to the received signal. An accurate performance evaluation is carried out both at the quantum limit and in the presence of phase noise for a binary system based on an antipodal decision in the Stokes space. The system structure is described. The quantum limit performance is evaluated, and the phase-noise induced penalty is evaluated using an accurate analytical model.>

DOI
10.1109/50.90929

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The first homodyne receiver for polarization modulated optical signals is proposed and analyzed. It is based on the detection at the receiver of the four quadratures that completely characterize the received optical field and on the estimation of the Stokes parameters starting from them. This allows homodyne detection to be carried out without phase locking the local oscillator to the received signal. An accurate performance evaluation is carried out both at the quantum limit and in the presence of phase noise for a binary system based on an antipodal decision in the Stokes space. The system structure is described. The quantum limit performance is evaluated, and the phase-noise induced penalty is evaluated using an accurate analytical model.>
We describe a homodyne optical Costas loop receiver intended to detect weak coherent states with diffused phase and suppressed carrier phase modulation. In order to get the information contained in the quadrature components of the optical field, we implement an 8-port receiver operating at 1550 nm, based on the manipulation of the state of polarization of both the local oscillator and the data signal. Employing binary phase-shift keying, we make measurements in the time and frequency domain of the quantum noise and bit error rate using an optimum loop filter, and compare the performance of our receiver against the standard quantum limit for the simultaneous quadrature detection, considering both ideal conditions and the overall efficiency of our set up.
We present an application of coherent homodyne detection to the problem of low photon number communications and cryptography. As the coherent demodulation of an optical field requires the measurement of its (non commutating) inphase and quadrature components, we present the structure and operation of an 8-port optical hybrid comprising 2 balanced homodyne detection structures, for the simultaneous measurement of the 2 quadratures. We analyze this receiver operating with a strong local oscillator field, when the received field is in weak coherent states, with digital phase modulation: we obtain the homodyne statistics and the uncertainty product in the presence of vacuum noises from the input signal port and unused ports and discuss the increase in uncertainty due to the simultaneous measurements of the quadratures. We obtain the signal to noise ratio as well of the bit error rate performance for binary phase shift keying and discuss the departure from the standard quantum limit.
We present a homodyne receiver structure for the detection of weak coherent states that uses sequential in-phase and quadrature measurements on the received optical signal. This receiver performs the optical carrier phase tracking requiring only a single balanced homodyne detector, by including a postdetection Costas-loop-type feedback, which additionally allows the use of suppressed carrier modulations in the received field, for efficient transmission. We report an experimental interferometric self-homodyne setup for the sequential detection of low photon number, binary phase-modulated optical signals that consist of strongly attenuated laser pulses by using a reference field as the local oscillator with an alternatively switched phase. A Costas loop postdetection subsystem is implemented in discrete time to perform fast real-time optical phase tracking. We also present the experimental results of the homodyne postdetection statistics for received BPSK signals with very low photon numbers, and compare them with the theoretical uncertainty limit. Finally, we conduct bit error rate measurements over a wide range of signal level, as well as a comparison with the standard quantum limit.
The structure of a coherent binary optical MAP receiver was derived and the effects of background radiation and phase estimation errors on receiver performance were evaluated. It was found that random phase errors do not affect the performance of the coherent receiver significantly, as long as the standard deviation of the phase error remains less than roughly 0.14 radians (or 8 degrees). It was also shown that background radiation is effectively suppressed by the optical homodyne receiver: Significant deterioration in receiver performance is observed only in the presence of extremely intense background fields. The most notable characteristic of the binary optical homodyne receiver therefore appears to be its ability to achieve quantum limited performance in high background environments, provided that sufficiently accurate estimates of the received phase can be obtained.
Quantum communication protocols require efficient detection schemes to maximize the information transfer rate between the sender and the receiver. To this aim, we have demonstrated that weak-field receivers, merging wave-like and particle-like features, can be considered as a valid alternative to already existing receivers, such as optical homodyne detection. To better emphasize the potential of our receiver, in this work we consider a proof of concept for quaternary communication based on coherent states with the same amplitude and different phase values. The encoding in phase requires a fine control of phase noise obtained through a feedback system. The results achieved in terms of mutual information and secret key generation rate encourage further increase of the alphabet towards an approximately continuous phase modulation.
A polarization diversity receiver scheme is presented for improving efficiency of balance homodyne detection. The proposed scheme may mitigate polarization fluctuation between signal and local oscillator field. With simple linear optical component and electronic processing circuit, the noise caused by differential phase and polarization mode between signal and local oscillators may be significantly decreased. To track the polarization fluctuation, a novel algorithm based on polarization diversity receiver which can achieve better performance in terms of linear quantum optics principle is proposed.