Adaptive dispersion compensation using a photonic integrated circuit finite impulse response filter.

Optical equalization can be used for chromatic dispersion compensation in optical communication systems to improve the system performance; however, optical signal processing (OSP) is generally specifically designed for transmission channels, that is non-adaptive to dynamic transmission distortions compared with digital signal processing (DSP). In this contribution, we demonstrate optical equalization using a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) filter for chromatic dispersion compensation, with static and adaptive techniques: (a) the static optical equalizer is calibrated based on the known fiber dispersion and length, by using the fractional delay reference method; (b) the adaptive optical equalizer is updated iteratively to compensate transmission impairments based on a least-mean squares (LMS) algorithm. Experimental results show that both the static optical equalizer and the adaptive optical LMS equalizer can give an 18-dB Q-factor for a 14-Gbd QPSK signal transmitting over 30 km. To highlight the capability of the optical equalizers, we use simulations to show the improvement in dispersion compensating characteristics by implementing additional taps.

A Model for Assessing the Electromagnetic Safety of an Inductively Coupled, Modular Brain-Machine Interface.

Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMI) offer the potential to modulate dysfunctional neurological networks by electrically stimulating the cerebral cortex via chronically-implanted microelectrodes. Wireless transmitters worn by BMI recipients must operate within electromagnetic emission and tissue heating limits, such as those prescribed by the IEEE and International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), to ensure that radiofrequency emissions of BMI systems are safe. Here, we describe an approach to generating pre-compliance safety data by simulating the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) and tissue heating of a multi-layered human head model containing a system of wireless, modular BMIs powered and controlled by an externally worn telemetry unit. We explore a number of system configurations such that our approach can be utilized for similar BMI systems, and our results provide a benchmark for the electromagnetic emissions of similar telemetry units. Our results show that the volume-averaged SAR per 10g of tissue exposed to our telemetry field complies with ICNIRP and IEEE reference levels, and that the maximum temperature increase in tissues was within permissible limits. These results were unaffected by the number of implants in the system model, and therefore we conclude that the electromagnetic emissions our BMI in any configuration are safe.

Optimizing DC restoration in Kramers-Kronig optical single-sideband receivers.

Kramers-Kronig optical single-sideband receivers remove the signal-signal beat interference (SSBI) that occurs when detecting a signal that has electrical signals mapped onto its optical field at the transmitter; such signals support electronic dispersion compensation without the need for a coherent receiver. To use the full range of the analog-to-digital converter's (ADC) range, it is best to a.c.-couple the photocurrent, to remove its DC content; however, the DC must be restored digitally before the KK algorithm is applied. Recent publications have concentrated on perfectly determining the restored DC's required level from the signal, with a view this is optimal for lowering error rates. In this paper, we investigate signal-signal beat interference (SSBI) cancellation in a single photodiode receiver using Kramers-Kronig receiver algorithm, with large variations in optical carrier-to-signal power ratio (CSPR) and DC offset level. Through simulations and experiments, we find a strategy to optimize the signal quality without the need of an extensive search for the DC offset value. We also find that a theoretically perfect determination of the original DC level does not provide best signal quality especially for low CSPRs; in order to achieve maximum cancellation of signal-signal beat interference, the level of the restored DC has an optimum value that depends on the optical CSPR. We define a digital CSPR, which is the value of the CSPR in the digital domain after DC restoration. Our measurements show that we simply need to bias the signal upwards and make the minimum signal above zero by 0.1% of the r.m.s. signal amplitude when the optical CSPR is low. For higher values of optical CSPR, the optimal digital CSPR is about 2-dB lower than the optical CSPR, and the optimal DC offset can be calculated from this digital CSPR. We find that the boundary between our low optical CSPR region and high optical CSPR region depends on the noise level in the system.

Tissue response to a chronically implantable wireless intracortical visual prosthesis (Gennaris array).

OBJECTIVE: Cortical vision prostheses aim to restore visual percepts to those who have lost sight by delivering electrical stimulation to the visual cortex. These devices need to be implanted intracranially using subdural or intracortical microelectrodes, and should preferably dispense with the need of transcranial wiring. The risks of cortical tissue injury from mechanical trauma, material biocompatibility, heat generation, electrical stimulation and long-term immune responses need to be evaluated. In this paper, we investigate the biological response to a wireless cortical vision prosthesis (Gennaris array), by characterizing the histological changes that occur following chronic electrical stimulation. APPROACH: Ten arrays (7 active, 3 passive) were implanted in three sheep using a pneumatic insertor. Each device consisted of a wireless receiver and Application Specific Integrated Circuit encased in a ceramic box, and could deliver electrical stimulation through one of 43 electrodes. MAIN RESULTS: Stimulation was delivered through seven of these devices for up to 3 months and each device was treated as independent for further analysis. Cumulatively, over 2700 h of stimulation were achieved without any observable adverse health effects. Histology showed that the devices and implantation procedure were well tolerated by the brain with a similar tissue response to the more common Utah arrays. However, voltage transients across the stimulating electrodes were not measured so exact charge injection could not be verified. SIGNIFICANCE: This work represents one of the first long-term tests of a fully implantable cortical vision prosthesis. The results indicate that long-term stimulation through wireless arrays can be achieved without induction of widespread tissue damage.

Spectrally efficient optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing.

This paper charts the development of spectrally efficient forms of optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) that are suited for intensity-modulated direct detection systems, such as wireless optical communications. The journey begins with systems using a DC-bias to ensure that no parts of the signal that modulates the optical source are negative in value, as negative optical intensity is unphysical. As the DC-part of the optical signal carries no information, it is wasteful in energy; thus asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM was developed, removing any negative-going peaks below the mean. Unfortunately, the clipping causes second-order distortion and intermodulation, so some subcarriers appear to be unusable, halving spectral efficiency; this is similar for unipolar and flipped optical OFDM. Thus, a considerable effort has been made to regain spectral efficiency, using layered techniques where the clipping distortion is mostly cancelled at the receiver, from a knowledge of one unpolluted layer, enabling one or more extra 'layers/paths/depths' to be received on the previously unusable subcarriers. Importantly, for a given optical power and high-order modulation, layered methods offer the best spectral efficiencies and need the lowest signal-to-noise ratios, especially if diversity combining is used. Thus, they could be important for high-bandwidth optical fibre systems. Efficient methods of generating all layers simultaneously, using fast Fourier transforms with their partial calculations extracted, are discussed, as are experimental demonstrations in both wireless and short-haul communications links. A musical analogy is also provided, which may point to how orchestral and rock music is deciphered in the brain. This article is part of the theme issue 'Optical wireless communication'.

Optical sampling to enhance Nyquist-shaped signal detection under limited receiver bandwidth.

Insufficient receiver bandwidth destroys the orthogonality of Nyquist-shaped pulses, generating inter-symbol interference (ISI). We propose using an optical pre-sampler to alleviate the requirement on the receiver bandwidth through pulse re-shaping. Experiments and simulations using an optically shaped 40-Gbaud Nyquist-shaped on-off-keying signal (N-OOK) show receiver sensitivity improvements of 4- and 7.1-dB under 18- and 11-GHz receiver electrical bandwidths, respectively.

CMOS stimulating chips capable of wirelessly driving 473 electrodes for a cortical vision prosthesis.

OBJECTIVE: Implantable neural stimulating and recording devices have the potential to restore capabilities such as vision or motor control to disabled patients, improving quality of life. Implants with a large number of stimulating electrodes typically utilize implanted batteries and/or subcutaneous wiring to deal with their high-power consumption and high data throughput needed to address all electrodes with low latency. The use of batteries places severe limitations on the implant's size, usable duty cycle, device longevity while subcutaneous wiring increases the risk of infection and mechanical damage due to device movement. APPROACH: To overcome these limitations, we have designed and implemented a system that supports up to 473 implanted stimulating microelectrodes, all wirelessly powered and individually controlled by micropower application specific integrated circuits (ASICs). MAIN RESULTS: Each ASIC controls 43 electrodes and draws 3.18 mW of power when stimulating through 24 channels. We measured the linearity of the digital-to-analog convertors (DACs) to be 0.21 LSB (integrated non-linearity) and the variability in timing of stimulation pulses across ASICs to be 172 ns. SIGNIFICANCE: This work demonstrates the feasibility of a new low power ASIC designed to be implanted in the visual cortex of humans. The fully implantable device will greatly reduce the risks of infection and damage due to mechanical issues.

All-optical OFDM demultiplexing with optical partial Fourier transform and coherent sampling.

We propose a novel scheme with a "time-lens"-based partial optical Fourier transform (OFT) and coherent sampling for high-speed complex orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) signal detection. Compared with all-optical OFDM demultiplexing with a matched optical filter, our proposed method replaces specialized optical filters with commercially available equipment, which relaxes stringent manufacturing and operational requirements. Our simulation shows that even with a partial OFT, theoretically, close to inter-channel interference-free performance is possible. In addition, we performed a proof-of-concept experiment of 16×10 Gbaud quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) all-optical OFDM detection, with all the bit error rates far below the 7% hard-overhead forward error correction limit.

Inter-channel nonlinear phase noise compensation using optical injection locking.

We propose optical injection locking (OIL) to enable compensation of the inter-channel nonlinear phase noise, which is dominated by cross-phase modulation (XPM). In this paper, injection locking is used to create a local oscillator for a homodyne receiver from a residual carrier. The locking is fast enough to follow XPM-phase distortion, but slow enough to reject the signal bands, which are spaced slightly away from the pilot. The homodyne receiver thus partially cancels XPM, as it is common to the signals and the pilot. An experimental 7-channel WDM system gives 1-dB (0.7-dB) improvement in the peak Q of the center channel, for QPSK (16-QAM) modulated OFDM subcarriers, and increased the transmission reach by 320 km. The optimum performance was achieved at an injection ratio of -45 dB, with the injected power as low as -24.5 dBm.

Single-photodiode per polarization receiver with signal-signal beat interference suppression through heterodyne detection.

We show that a simplified, single-photodiode per polarization heterodyne receiver is able to directly suppress signal-signal beat interference (SSBI), without the need for cancellation in the digital domain. We characterize performance degradation due to SSBI, and show that a strong LO in the receiver can mitigate SSBI. Transmission of 400 Gb/s-class signals is shown over single fiber spans of up to 160 km, and over field-deployed metropolitan area fiber. These results indicate that a single photodiode can be used to receive complex optical signals in high speed fiber systems without the need for SSBI cancellation in the digital domain.

Simple optoelectronic frequency-offset estimator for coherent optical OFDM.

We propose a carrier frequency-offset estimator for optical OFDM systems using off-the-shelf optical components and simple digital processing as a replacement for the purely digital signal processing using the cyclostationarity property of optical OFDM signals with cyclic prefix. Simulations show the system accuracy of <4% estimate error within the range [-1250 + 1250] MHz offsets for a single polarization 28-Gbaud OFDM signal with 15% cyclic prefix. The effects of the system parameters on the performance are investigated.

All-optical digital-to-analog converter based on cross-phase modulation with temporal integration.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate an all-optical digital-to-analog converter based on cross-phase modulation with temporal integration. The scheme is robust for driving signal noise due to the low-pass filtering feature of the temporal integrator. The proof-of-concept experiment demonstrates the generation of pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM) sequences up to eight levels. The performance of random PAM 2 and PAM 4 signals with different optical signal-to-noise ratios of the binary driving signal is also investigated. The scheme is scalable for high-speed operation with an appropriate dispersion profile of the nonlinear medium.

Photonic integrated circuit implementation of a sub-GHz-selectivity frequency comb filter for optical clock multiplication.

We report a photonic integrated circuit implementation of an optical clock multiplier, or equivalently an optical frequency comb filter. The circuit comprises a novel topology of a ring-resonator-assisted asymmetrical Mach-Zehnder interferometer in a Sagnac loop, providing a reconfigurable comb filter with sub-GHz selectivity and low complexity. A proof-of-concept device is fabricated in a high-index-contrast stoichiometric silicon nitride (Si3N4/SiO2) waveguide, featuring low loss, small size, and large bandwidth. In the experiment, we show a very narrow passband for filters of this kind, i.e. a -3-dB bandwidth of 0.6 GHz and a -20-dB passband of 1.2 GHz at a frequency interval of 12.5 GHz. As an application example, this particular filter shape enables successful demonstrations of five-fold repetition rate multiplication of optical clock signals, i.e. from 2.5 Gpulses/s to 12.5 Gpulses/s and from 10 Gpulses/s to 50 Gpulses/s. This work addresses comb spectrum processing on an integrated platform, pointing towards a device-compact solution for optical clock multipliers (frequency comb filters) which have diverse applications ranging from photonic-based RF spectrum scanners and photonic radars to GHz-granularity WDM switches and LIDARs.

Polarization independent optical injection locking for carrier recovery in optical communication systems.

An optical injection locking (IL) system that is independent of the incoming signal's polarization is demonstrated for carrier recovery in coherent optical communication systems. A sub-system that enables polarization independence is discussed and experimentally verified. The system is tested over a 20-km test field link using a broad-linewidth laser (40 MHz), and shows the suppression of phase noise when using the carrier recovered by injection locking as the local oscillator.

Cycle-slip-less low-complexity phase recovery algorithm for coherent optical receivers.

We propose and experimentally validate a blind phase recovery algorithm based on tracking low-frequency components of the phase noise, which we call "filtered carrier-phase estimation (F-CPE)." Tracking only the low-frequency components allows F-CPE to reduce the computational complexity by using a frequency-domain equalizer and to simplify the partitioning of a 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM) constellation. Further, this approach eliminates cycle slips by suppressing the impact of amplified spontaneous emission on phase noise estimation. The experimental results demonstrate cycle-slip-free operation for 15 and 32 GBd 16QAM signals. Additionally, the proposed method showed similar or better sensitivity compared with the blind-phase-search algorithm, near standard forward error correction thresholds of modern wavelength division multiplexing systems.

Hardware-efficient signal generation of layered/enhanced ACO-OFDM for short-haul fiber-optic links.

Layered/enhanced ACO-OFDM is a promising candidate for intensity modulation and direct-detection based short-haul fiber-optic links due to its both power and spectral efficiency. In this paper, we firstly demonstrate a hardware-efficient real-time 9.375 Gb/s QPSK-encoded layered/enhanced asymmetrical clipped optical OFDM (L/E-ACO-OFDM) transmitter using a Virtex-6 FPGA. This L/E-ACO-OFDM signal is successfully transmitted over 20-km uncompensated standard single-mode fiber (S-SMF) using a directly modulated laser. Several methods are explored to reduce the FPGA's logic resource utilization by taking advantage of the L/E-ACO-OFDM's signal characteristics. We show that the logic resource occupation of L/E-ACO-OFDM transmitter is almost the same as that of DC-biased OFDM transmitter when they achieve the same spectral efficiency, proving its great potential to be used in a real-time short-haul optical transmission link.

Silicon microring modulator-based RF mixer for millimeter-wave phase-coded signal generation.

Phase-coded radio frequency (RF) pulses are widely adopted for radar systems as an effective signal format to enable high-range resolution. However, generating such signals conventionally requires high-speed electronics and complex RF circuitry that impose burdens on the system cost and power consumption. In particular, modern radar systems desire features such as high frequencies, e.g., in the millimeter-wave region, high compactness, and high system flexibility, which pose great challenges for the conventional all-electronics solutions. In contrast, integrated microwave photonics opens a way to solutions that are able to provide those features simultaneously, together with potential for full integration and low cost fabrication. Here, we present an integrated microwave photonic method of a binary-phase-coded millimeter-wave signal generation. The core device is a silicon microring modulator with a device size of 0.13 mm×0.32 mm and a modulation bandwidth of 23 GHz. Using RF seed frequencies of 17.5 GHz and 20 GHz, respectively, we experimentally demonstrated the generation of binary-phase-coded signals at 35 GHz and 40 GHz using our proposed approach, the performance of which was verified by a pulse compression ratio of 94 and 106, respectively. The result of this work points to the realization of a chip-scale flexible millimeter-wave signal generator.

Cyclic spectra for wavelength-routed optical networks.

We propose occupying the guard bands in closely spaced WDM systems with redundant signal spectral components to increase tolerance to frequency misalignment and channel shaping from multiplexing elements. By cyclically repeating the spectrum of a modulated signal, we show improved tolerance to impairments due to add/drop multiplexing with a commercial wavelength selective switch in systems using 5%-20% guard bands on a 50 GHz DWDM grid.

Nyquist pulse shaping using arrayed waveguide grating routers.

We propose and demonstrate by simulations a novel Nyquist-WDM (N-WDM) superchannel transmitter based on an arrayed waveguide grating router (AWGR). This approach can generate Nyquist pulses at multiple wavelengths using a single AWGR. Results for a 3-channel 960-Gbit/s QPSK superchannel system show that a 10% guard band reduces the inter-channel interference (ICI) sufficiently. The design introduces less than 0.16-dB penalty when the waveguide loss is 2 dB/cm and 0.73-dB penalty when the standard deviation of phase error is 10°. Such Nyquist pulse shapers can be realised on a chip scale using photonic integrated circuits technology, and could be compactly integrated with other functional components to create single-chip N-WDM superchannel transmitters.

Unscented Kalman filters for polarization state tracking and phase noise mitigation.

Simultaneous polarization and phase noise tracking and compensation is proposed based on an unscented Kalman filter (UKF). We experimentally demonstrate the tracking under noise-loading and after 800-km single-mode fiber transmission with 20-Gbaud QPSK and 16-QAM signals. These experiments show that the proposed UKF outperforms both conventional blind tracing algorithms and a previously proposed extended Kalman filter, at the cost of higher complexity. Additionally, we propose and test modified Kalman filter algorithms to reduce computational complexity.