This paper provides on a theoretical and numerical study of the probability density function (PDF) of the on-off keying (OOK) signals in ASE-limited systems. We present simple closed formulas of PDFs for the optical intensity and the received baseband signal. To confirm the validity of our model, the calculation results yielded by the proposed formulas are compared with those of numerical simulations and the conventional Gaussian model. Our theoretical and numerical results confirm that the signal distribution differs from a Gaussian profile. It is also demonstrated that our model can properly evaluate the signal distribution and the resultant BER performance, especially for systems with an optical bandwidth close to the receiver baseband width.

Inter-channel crosstalk is one of the crucial issues in multichannel optical systems. Conventional studies assume that the crosstalk and the main signals have identical format. The present study, in contrast, considers different signal formats for the main and crosstalk lights, and shows that bit error degradation is different depending on the modulation format. Statistical properties of the crosstalk are also investigated. The result quantitatively confirms that a crosstalk light whose signal distribution is closer to a Gaussian profile causes larger degradation.

This study numerically investigates the symbol-level allocation of four-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM4) signals for optically pre-amplified receiver systems. Three level-allocation schemes are examined: intensity-equispaced, amplitude-equispaced, and numerically optimized. Numerical simulations are conducted to comprehensively compare the receiver sensitivities for these level-allocation schemes under various system conditions. The results show that the superiority or inferiority between the level allocations is significantly dependent on the system conditions of the bandwidth of amplified spontaneous emission light, modulation bandwidth, and signal extinction ratio (ER). The mechanisms underlying these dependencies are also discussed.

Four-wave mixing (FWM) is a crucial impairment factor in optical wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) transmission systems over dispersion-shifted fibers. This paper presents an FWM suppression scheme that places dispersive elements (DEs) such as dispersion compensation fibers at optically repeating points in transmission lines. In a DE, the relative phase of the transmitted signal lights and the FWM light generated in the previous spans is shifted. Consequently, the FWM lights generated in each span are summed in random phases and the total FWM power at the end of the transmission lines is reduced from that in straight transmission lines with no DEs. We conduct proof-of-principle experiments to confirm the mechanism of the FWM reduction. Calculation for evaluating the FWM reduction ratio in a WDM transmission system is also presented.

The efficiency of generating four-wave mixing (FWM) from phase-modulated (PM) optical signal is studied. An analysis, that takes bit shifts occurring during fiber propagation due to group velocity differences into account, indicates that the FWM efficiency from PM signals is smaller than that from continuous waves in fiber transmission lines whose distance is longer than the walk-off length between transmitted optical signals.

Wavelength-division multiplexing multicore fibers can transmit a large amount of information over one fiber, and high-density core allocations enable a large number of fiber lines to be deployed in limited spaces. However, inter-core crosstalk degrades the signal in these systems. This paper describes the design of a frequency interleaving scheme for a 7-core hexagonal multicore fiber. Interleaving schemes shift signal spectra between neighboring cores to reduce the signal degradation caused by inter-core crosstalk. The channel frequency allocation that most efficiently lowers the bit error rate is numerically determined in this study. The results indicate that the optimum frequency interleaving improves the allowable crosstalk ratio by 6.3 dB for QPSK signals, demonstrating its potential for improving wavelength-division multiplexing multicore fiber transmission systems.

We review recent progresses in our studies on the fiber-optic soliton compression and related subjects with special emphasis on dispersion-flattened fibers (DFFs). As for the ultimately short pulse generation, it has been demonstrated to compress 5 ps laser diode pulses down to 20 fs with a 15.1 m-long single-stage step-like dispersion profiled fiber employed. The compression was brought about through a series of the higher order soliton processes in conjunction with a single and ordinary erbium-doped fiber preamplifier, and DFFs contained at its end played a major role. We have performed intensive investigations on the DFF compression mechanisms in the 100-20 fs range. A fairly reliable model was developed for the higher order soliton propagation along a DFF in the temporal range from 100 down to 30 fs by taking into consideration the higher order nonlinear and dispersion effects as well as incident pulse shape dependence. Through the simulation, parametric spectrum generation originating from the modulation instability gain was pointed out at frequencies apart from the pump wave frequency, which agrees with the experimental observation. Its possible application is also discussed.

This paper proposed an iterative soft interference canceller (IC) referred to as turbo equalizer for the self-coherent detection, and extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart based irregular low density parity check (LDPC) code optimization for the turbo equalizer in optical fiber short-reach transmissions. The self-coherent detection system is capable of linear demodulation by a single photodiode receiver. However, the self-coherent detection suffers from the interference induced by signal-signal beat components, and the suppression of the interference is a vital goal of self-coherent detection. For improving the error-free signal detection performance of the self-coherent detection, we proposed an iterative soft IC with the aid of forward error correction (FEC) decoder. Furthermore, typical FEC code is no longer appropriate for the iterative detection of the turbo equalizer. Therefore, we designed an appropriate LDPC code by using EXIT chart aided code design. The validity of the proposed turbo equalizer with the appropriate LDPC is confirmed by computer simulations.

In super-Nyquist wavelength division multiplexed systems, performance of forward error correction (FEC) can be improved by an iterative decoder between a maximum likelihood decoder for polybinary shaping and an FEC decoder. The typical iterative decoder includes not only the iteration between the first and second decoders but also the internal iteration within the FEC decoder. Such two-fold loop configuration would increase the computational complexity for decoding. In this paper, we propose the simplified iterative decoder, where the internal iteration in the FEC decoder is not performed, reducing the computational complexity. We numerically evaluate the bit-error rate performance of polybinary-shaped QPSK signals in the simplified iterative decoder. The numerical results show that the FEC performance can be improved in the simplified scheme, compared with the typical iterative decoder. In addition, the performance of the simplified iterative decoder has been investigated by the extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart.