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Towards ultrasensitive optical links enabled by low-noise phase-sensitive amplifiers

Nature Photonics volume 5, pages 430–436 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

In principle, optical phase-sensitive amplifiers are known to be capable of realizing noiseless amplification, as well as improving the signal-to-noise-ratio of optical links by 3 dB compared to conventional, phase-insensitively amplified links. However, current state-of-the-art phase-sensitive amplifiers are still far from being practical, lacking, for example, significant noise performance improvement, broadband gain and modulation-format transparency. Here, we demonstrate experimentally, for the first time, an optical-fibre-based non-degenerate phase-sensitive amplifier link consisting of a phase-insensitive parametric copier followed by a phase-sensitive amplifier that provides broadband amplification, signal modulation-format independence, and nearly 6 dB link noise-figure improvement over conventional, erbium-doped fibre amplifier-based links. The PSA has a record-low 1.1 dB noise figure, and can be extended to work with multiple wavelength channels with modest system complexity. This concept can also be realized in other materials with third-order nonlinearities, and is useful in any attenuation-limited optical link.

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Figure 1: Basic principle of a copier–PSA amplified link.
Figure 2: Experimental set-up.
Figure 3: PSA characterization in a copier–PSA configuration.
Figure 4: Benefits of a copier–PSA amplified link.
Figure 5: BER tests of three-channel, 10 Gbaud DQPSK data.

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Acknowledgements

The research leading to these results received funding from the European Communities 7th Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013, grant agreement 22454, STREP PHASORS), and also from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Air Force Material Command, USAF (grant no. FA8655-09-1-3076). The authors would like to thank M. Vasilyev, A. Bogris, J. Kakande and A. Ellis for helpful discussions, P.-O. Hedekvist for help with the measurement error analysis and Sumitomo Corporation for providing the copier HNLF.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience, Photonics Laboratory, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, SE-412 96, Sweden

    Z. Tong, C. Lundström, P. A. Andrekson, M. Karlsson & E. Tipsuwannakul

  2. Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent, Holmdel, New Jersey, 07733, USA

    C. J. McKinstrie

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Jacobs School of Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, 92093, California, USA

    D. J. Blessing

  4. National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, 4-2-1, Nukui-kita, Koganei, 184-8795, Tokyo, Japan

    B. J. Puttnam

  5. Department of Electronics, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Doshisha University, Kyotanabe, 610-0321, Kyoto, Japan

    H. Toda

  6. OFS, Priorparken 680, Brøndby, 2605, Denmark

    L. Grüner-Nielsen

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  1. Z. Tong
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Contributions

Z.T. and C.L. jointly designed and built the PSA set-up. P.A.A. coordinated the experiments and provided overall technical leadership. C.J.M., Z.T. and M.K. contributed to the theoretical part. Z.T. carried out the PSA characterizations. D.J.B. and E.T. built the transmitter and receiver for BER tests, and Z.T., D.J.B. and E.T. performed BER measurements. B.J.P. and H.T. contributed to the design and implementation of the phase-locking loop. L.G.-N. provided and characterized the highly nonlinear fibres used in the PSA. Z.T., P.A.A., C.L., M.K., C.J.M. and D.J.B. jointly wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Z. Tong.

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Tong, Z., Lundström, C., Andrekson, P. et al. Towards ultrasensitive optical links enabled by low-noise phase-sensitive amplifiers. Nature Photon 5, 430–436 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2011.79

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