Design of optical time-division multiplexed systems using the cascaded four-wave mixing in a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber for simultaneous time demultiplexing and wavelength multicasting

This paper reports a new design of optical time-division multiplexed (OTDM) systems that possess a functionality of simultaneous time demultiplexing and wavelength multicasting based on the cascaded four-wave mixing in a dispersion-flattened highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (DF-HNL-PCF). A module of OTDM demultiplexing and wavelength multicasting can be feasibly implemented by using a 3 dB optical coupler, a high-power erbium-doped fiber amplifier, a short-length DF-HNL-PCF, and a wavelength demultiplexer in the simple configuration. We also carry out an experiment on the proposed system to demonstrate the 100–10 Gbit s−1 OTDM demultiplexing with wavelength conversion simultaneously at 4 multicast wavelengths. It is shown that error-free wavelength multicasting is achieved on two wavelength channels with the minimum power penalty of 3.2 dB relative to the 10 Gbit s−1 back-to-back measurement, whereas the bit error rates of other two multicasting channels are measured to be about 10−6–10−5. Moreover, we propose the use of a proper error-correcting code to improve the multicasting performance of such an OTDM system, and our work reveals that the resulting system can theoretically support error-free multicasting of the OTDM-demultiplexed signal on four wavelength channels.

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication/published in Journal of Optics. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at 10.1088/2040-8978/17/7/075702.