Comunicaciones Ópticas:

Optical transmitters
Gabriel Saavedra, 2024-1

Comunicaciones Ópticas, 2024-1 1

Optical transmitters
• The role of an optical transmitter is to convert and electrical signal
into an optical one.
• Optical fibre is a transmission medium, it needs an optical carrier in
order to transmit baseband signal with information.

Information Transmitter
Source

Information
Source
010010
Light
Modulation
Source Comunicaciones Ópticas, 2023-1 2
Optical transmitters

TX • Minimal attenuation in OF at 1550 nm

0.2 (dB/km)
Information • 1550 nm ~ 193.4 THz
Source m(t)
• Minimal dispersion at 1310 nm
010010
Light
Source
Modulation s(t) = m(t)c(t)
c(t)

• The light source has to emit at 1550 nm in order to have minimal attenuation
• Several modulation schemes are used now a days

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Light sources
• Semiconductor lasers available since 1962.
• CW at room temperature demonstrated in 1970.
• Large research interest in semiconductor lasers for their
telecommunications applications.

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Light emission

Photon energy: ℎ𝑣

Ground state: 𝐸1

Exited state: 𝐸2

Band gap Energy 𝐸𝑔 = 𝐸2 − 𝐸1

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 Light emission

Spontaneous emission: random direction and phase

Stimulated emission: same direction and phase than incoming photon

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Light emission
Rate equations:

𝑁1 , 𝑁2 are the atomic densities in the

𝑅𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛 = 𝐴𝑁2 ground and excited states
𝑅𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑚 = 𝐵𝑁2 𝜌𝑒𝑚
𝜌𝑒𝑚 is the spectral density of the
𝑅𝑎𝑏𝑠 = 𝐵′ 𝑁1 𝜌𝑝𝑒𝑚 electromagnetic energy

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Light emission
In thermal equilibrium we have:

𝑁2 −ℎ𝑣
= 𝑒𝑥𝑝
𝑁1 𝑘𝐵 𝑇

In thermal equilibrium 𝑁1 and 𝑁2 are constant:

𝐴𝑁2 + 𝐵𝑁2 𝜌𝑒𝑚 = 𝐵′ 𝑁1 𝜌𝑒𝑚

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Light emission
In thermal equilibrium we have:

8𝜋ℎ𝑣 3 /𝑐 3
𝜌𝑒𝑚 =
ℎ𝑣
exp −1
𝑘𝐵 𝑇

Therefore,

8𝜋ℎ𝑣 3
𝐴= 𝑐3
B
𝑅𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛 excedes 𝑅𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑚 and 𝑅𝑎𝑏𝑠 if 𝑘𝐵 𝑇 > ℎ𝑣
Laser at near infrared ℎ𝑣~1𝑒𝑉 must operate away from thermal equilibrium
𝐵′ = 𝐵 Lasers are pumped by an external energy source

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 Light emission

• Stimulated emission needs to

compete with the absorption process.
• This occurs only when: 𝑁2 > 𝑁1
• Population inversion

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Light emission

Semiconductor materials
used to build optical sources

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Light Emitting Diode (LED)

• Forward biased p-n junction emits light.

• Light is emitted through spontaneous emission.

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Light Emitting Diode (LED)

• Electron-hole recombination generates

spontaneous emission.
• The linewidth of the LED is very large
(Δ𝜆 ≈ 30 − 60 nm).
• How does chromatic dispersion affect the
use of LED sources?

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 Light Emitting Diode (LED)

The spectrum of a LED depends on the

spontaneous emission rate: 𝑅𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛 (Ω)

Potential applications for LED sources???

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Light Emitting Diode (LED)
Modulation response of the LED is given by:

𝑓3𝑑𝐵 = 3 2𝜋𝜏𝑐 −1 Where 𝜏𝑐 is the carrier life time.

The 𝜏𝑐 is 2 – 5 ns for LEDs 𝑓3𝑑𝐵 = 50 − 140 MHz

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Light Emitting Diode (LED)
𝑓3𝑑𝐵 = 140 MHz

100 MHz 300 MHz

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Semiconductor Laser

Advantages of the semiconductor laser vs LED

• High output power
• Coherent light
• Narrow spectral width enables high bit rate operation

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Semiconductor Laser

Fabry-perrot cavity:
Lasing operation above treshold current

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Semiconductor Laser

• FP laser emits light in several longitudinal modes

• Operation at 10 Gb/s-km

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Semiconductor Laser

Distributed feedback laser (DFB):

• Allows for the suppression of longitudinal modes using gratings
• Fixed grating allows stimulated emission in a single mode.
• Usually not tuneable

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Semiconductor Laser

• Modern systems require single mode operation with narrow linewidth.

• DFB laser is not tuneable in wavelength once is fabricated.
• Tuneable lasers are required.
• External cavity semiconductor laser (ECL)

Reflectivity of the external cavity depends on wavelength

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Semiconductor Laser

• ECL operate by moving the external cavity to stimulate emission in a given mode

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 Modulation of information
Two main modulation types are used in optical communications:
• Intensity modulation / Direct detection: use only the signal intensity to code
information
Amplitude

1 0 1 1 0 1

Time
• Coherent systems: intensity and phase are used to code information

101101 Mapping Modulation

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[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrature_amplitude_modulation
Intensity modulation
• Direct modulation: Output power of a laser depends directly on the drive current.
Over 𝐼𝑡ℎ population inversion is achieved and lasing starts.

Drive
Data Laser
Circuit

• Trough a drive circuit a digital

message (0s and 1s) is converted
into different drive current
• The message is a function of
intensities an has the form:

𝑚 𝑡 =𝐼 𝑡

s 𝑡 = 𝑅𝑒{𝐼 𝑡 𝐴 𝑡 𝑒 𝑖𝜔0 𝑡+𝜙 }

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Intensity modulation
Modulating signal intensity:
• Direct modulation: Directly modulated lasers experience frequency chirp and have
a limited On/Off switching speed.
• This limits their use in WDM systems

10 𝐺𝑏/𝑠 100 𝑝𝑠

• Electronic switching speed limits the

bandwidth for directly modulated
signals.

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Intensity modulation
Available modulation formats:
• On-off keying (OOK): each symbol (time-slot) carries
1 bit of information.
• Binary phase shift keying (BPSK): each symbol (time-
slot) carries 1 bit of information.
• Pulse amplitude modulation (M-PAM): each symbol
http://www.rfwireless-world.com/Terminology/OOK-vs-FSK-vs-ASK.html
carrier log 2 (𝑀) bits of information.

https://dsp.stackexchange.com/questions/37113/help-me-understand-how-pulse-amplitude-modulation-pam-works

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Intensity modulation
Direct intensity modulation is used mainly in:
• SFP transponders
• 2.5 Gb/s SFP
• 10 Gb/s XSFP

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Phase modulator
• Una alternativa para evitar el chirp de frecuencia experimentado al modular la curriete de un laser es el uso de
dispositivos externos a la fuente óptica:
• Utilizando guías de onda se pueden construir dispositivos que pueden ser acoplados a la fibras ópticas.
• Los dispositivos funcionan utilizando el efecto electro-óptico (efecto de Pockels).
• El dispositivo más sencillo es el modulador de phase.
• La señal eléctrica aplicada induce un cambio de n en la guía de onda.

Data
Guía de onda

Laser MOD

Modulador de fase

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Mach Zehnder modulator
Es fabricado utilizando interferómetros del tipo Mach Zehnder en guías de onda.
A uno o ambos brazos del interferómetro se le introduce un modulador de fase para controlar la intensidad
de salida.

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Quadrature amplitude modulation
• Using the whole optical field, more information can be coded into a single time slot (symbol).
• A nested configuration of MZ can be used to modulate the phase and amplitude of a signal.

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Flashback comunicaiones digitales
• La tasa de generación de símbolos es llamada tasa de símbolos y se mide en Baud.
• El codificador del transmisor está encargado de mapear los bits del mensaje a símbolos.
• Un formato de modulación con cardinalidad M cotiene 𝐥𝐨𝐠 𝟐 𝑴 bits en cada símbolo.
• La codificación/etiquetación (labelling) indica cuales bits corresponden a cada símbolo (gray
coding).

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Quadrature amplitude modulation
M-QAM transmits log 2 (𝑀) per symbol.
Increasing the constellation cardinality increases
the information rate.
Higher OSNR is required for higher cardinalities

https://www.gaussianwaves.com/tag/64-qam/

Agrell, E., Alvarado, A., & Kschischang, F. R. (2015).

Implications of information theory in optical fibre
communications. Philosphical Transactions A. Comunicaciones Ópticas, 2023-1 32
Ejemplos
¿Cuál es la tasa de transmisión para los siguientes formatos de modulación?
• 16-QAM @ 10GB/s
• 256-QAM @ 32 GB/s
• BPSK @ 25 GB/s

¿Cómo se puede obtener una señal que trabaje a 100 Gb/s y 1 Tb/s?

Comunicaciones Ópticas, 2023-1 33

El efecto de la forma de puso (pulse shapping)

• La forma del pulso temporal determina el ancho de banda de este.

• Sistemas digitales utilizan funciones ( ) para filtrar los pulsos antes de entrar al medio de transmisión.

• Un pulso rectangular es muy ineficiente espectralmente

• Idealmente queremos implementar pulsos del tipo sinc, como no es posible se utilizan filtros Raised Cosine.
• Pulsos con el mínimo ancho de banda son llamados pulsos de Nyquist.
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 El efecto de la forma de puso (pulse shapping)
Pulsos rectangulares Pulsos RRC
1 canal

WDM

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Coding of information
In a digital communication system many stages
exist before the information is modulated into a
carrier:
Information • Coding for error correction.
Source m(t)
• Mapping into different modulation
010010 formats

Light
Modulation
Source

c(t)

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Coding of information
• Error correction is a massive research field in communications.
• Forward error correction (FEC) adds redundant information to allow the received to correct errors produced
during transmission.
• Examples:
• Reed-Solom codes (RS)
• Low density pairity check (LDPC)

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Coding of information
Gross bit rate (R): overall rate, including information and redundant data
For k bits of useful data, the code generates n bits of data
Code rate (k/n): proportion of data that is non redundant
Net bit rate: rate of useful data

𝒌
𝑁𝑒𝑡 ≤ 𝑹
𝒏

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Quadrature amplitude modulation

Modulation format Symbol rate Gross bit rate Net bit rate for a
(sym/s) 4/5 FEC code
OOK 10
4PAM 10
QPSK 32
16-QAM 32
64-QAM 32
1024-QAM 32

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 Cost vs capacity
The selection of the optical source, modulation method and formats depends on the type of application.
Short-distance high density solutions (data centres and access network), require large number of
transmitter/receiver modules are cost driven and use cheap lasers or LED, direct modulation and up to 4-PAM
as modulation format.
Long-distance links are capacity driven, and use high quality lasers, external modulation and up to 256-QAM
as modulation format.

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/cloud/next-gen-power-solutions-hyperscale-data-centers
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Increasing capacity: multiplexing techniques
To increase the capacity of an optical link a large number of channels can multiplexed within a single optical fibre.
The most common multiplexing techniques for optical communication systems are:
• Polarisation multiplexing
• Wavelength division multiplexing
• Time division multiplexing

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Polarisation multiplexing
Optical fibres support propagation of two orthogonal polarisation for each propagation mode.
Polarisation can be understood as the “direction” of vibration in an electro-magnetic wave.
Single mode fibre only propagate the fundamental mode (LP01)

PM enables the transmission of two

simultaneous channels in a single
carrier frequency.

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 Polarisation multiplexing
Transmitter design for PM

Data X

IQ
modulator
Polarization combiner
Laser

IQ
modulator

Data Y
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Polarisation multiplexing
Dual polarisation IQ modulator

Dual IQ modulator structure

Uses a single optical source as input

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Polarisation multiplexing
Drawback of polarisation multiplexing:
• Increases the power per wavelength (channel) -> increased nonlinearities
• Polarisation mode dispersion
• Requires channel equalisation to undo rotations and delays

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Wavelength division multiplexing
Multiple channels can be transmitted if they use different carriers!

Winzer, P. J., Neilson, D. T., & Chraplyvy, A. R. (2018). Fiber-optic transmission and networking: the
previous 20 and the next 20 years [Invited]. Optics Express, 26(18), 24190.

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Wavelength division
multiplexing
The ITU grid specifies the carrier frequencies for WDM
transmission.
Up to 50 can be transmitted with 100 GHz spacing
using the C-band.
Up to 100 can be transmitted with 50 GHz spacing
using the C-band.

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Wavelength division multiplexing
Transmitter design for WDM

PM - IQ
Laser 1
modulator

A
W
G

PM - IQ
Laser N
modulator

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Wavelength division multiplexing
Transmitter design for WDM (some considerations)
• WDM channels should not overlap in spectrum to reduce linear crosstalk.
• The modulated spectrum should not exceed the channel spacing.
• The shape of the transmitted pulses can be used to generate orthogonal signal
in time and in frequency.
• The root raised cosine function is used at the transmitter to shape pulses.

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Assuming a transmitter is capable of generating 5
PM – 16 QAM channels at 32 GBaud, with a code
rate of 93%. Draw a schematic of the transmitter
and calculate the net bit rate of the transmitter.

1 Baud = 1 symbol/s

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