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Opto-Electronics and Communications Conference (OECC)

Influence of Amplified Spontaneous Emission Noise in Optical Eigenvalue Transmission System

Kojiro Nakagawa, Kazuma Nishino, Shogo Nakao, Ken Mishina, Akihiro Maruta

Published Jun 30, 2024• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

The eigenvalue of the eigenvalue equation associated to the nonlinear Schrödinger equation is constant regardless of the propagation distance, so it’s an ideal information carrier that is not affected by the dispersion and the nonlinearity of optical fiber. However, the eigenvalue is affected by noise added to the signal. In this paper, we study the influence of the amplified spontaneous emission noise caused by optical amplifiers inserted at equal intervals in optical transmission system. The theoretical analysis result is consistent with computer simulated and experimental results.

DOI
10.1109/oecc54135.2024.10975500

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The eigenvalue of the eigenvalue equation associated to the nonlinear Schrödinger equation is constant regardless of the propagation distance, so it’s an ideal information carrier that is not affected by the dispersion and the nonlinearity of optical fiber. However, the eigenvalue is affected by noise added to the signal. In this paper, we study the influence of the amplified spontaneous emission noise caused by optical amplifiers inserted at equal intervals in optical transmission system. The theoretical analysis result is consistent with computer simulated and experimental results.
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We present a theoretical analysis and an experimental study of the statistical properties of the noise accompanying an optical pulse propagating in a nonlinear semiconductor optical amplifier. Several degrees of gain saturation corresponding to different levels of optical signal-to-noise ratios (OSNRs) are examined. We employ the Heun numerical procedure to ensure proper convergence to the Stratonovich solution of the multiplicative propagation equation. This algorithm takes also into account the effect of gain saturation due to the amplified spontaneous emission noise. Moreover, the multicanonical Monte Carlo algorithm is used to efficiently calculate the probability density functions (pdfs), including the tails, of the peak of a pulse which emerges at the output of a saturated semiconductor optical amplifier. The results are compared to the corresponding pdfs obtained in a linear amplification system (where the optical noise is additive and Gaussian) having the same gain and under identical OSNR levels. We demonstrate that the pdf of the saturated amplifier is shifted toward lower power levels and is narrower, or equivalently, the mean and variance for the saturated amplifier case are smaller. Also, the difference between the two configurations increases with the degree of gain saturation. The theoretical predictions are confirmed by a series of experiments in which the pdfs at the output of the linear amplification scheme and saturated semiconductor optical amplifier are measured for an optical pulse of /spl sim/ 70-ps duration.
It is noted that the fiber propagation loss is a random process along the length of propagation. The stochastic nature of the loss process induces a random fluctuation to the energy of the optical signals, which, as an extra source of noise, could become comparable to the amplified-spontaneous-emission noise of optical amplifiers. The optical noise in random loss/gain has a quantum origin, as a manifestation of the corpuscular nature of electromagnetic radiation. This paper adopts the Schrodinger representation, and uses a density matrix in the basis of photon number states to describe the optical signals and their interaction with the environment of loss/gain media. When the environmental degrees of freedom are traced out, a reduced density matrix is obtained in the diagonal form, which describes the total energy of the optical signal evolving along the propagation distance. Such formulism provides an intuitive interpretation of the quantum-optical noise as the result of a classical Markov process in the space of the photon number states. The formulism would be more convenient for practical engineers, and should be sufficient for fiber-optic systems with direct intensity detection, because the quantity of concern is indeed the number of photons contained in a signal pulse. Even better, the model admits analytical solutions to the photon-number distribution of the optical signals.
The beat between an amplified optical signal and the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise is typically the primary limitation to the performance of optical fiber amplifiers. A filtering technique which might reduce this beat noise by 3dB creates a paradox since the noise figure's quantum limit of 3dB could then be reduced to 0dB implying noiseless amplification, which is impossible. The conjecture that this paradox might be resolved by different attenuations of the quantum and semiclassical descriptions of signal-spontaneous noise has been experimentally rejected . Herein, we present a variation of that experiment and telecommunication' applications of this filtering technique are discussed.
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a stable secure optical communication system with no need for secure key distribution. In this scheme, the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise is used as the optical carrier to hide the signal both in time and frequency domain. The coherence length of the ASE noise is pretty short so that it is extremely difficult for an eavesdropper to intercept the signal. Only one Mach-Zehnder interferometer exists in the receiver, and there is no need for the receiver to match the optical delay. By this way, the optical delay and the polarization fluctuation caused by the environment can be automatically counteracted in the returning path. Therefore, no key distribution is required, and the optical delay value can be changed dynamically as a secret key in the receiver. In our experiment, 1Gb/s encrypted on-off keying signal is securely transmitted over 25km standard single mode fiber and dispersion compensation fiber.