基于光子晶体光纤中多抽运四波混频效应的新型光层组播技术

All-optical multicasting based on multi-pump four-wave mixing in photonic crystal fiber

光层组播是未来透明光子网络中一项重要的全光信号处理功能,提出并实验证实了一种基于色散平坦高非线性光子晶体光纤中多抽运四波混频效应的光层组播方法,将一束信号光与两束连续抽运光同时输入高非线性光子晶体光纤中,通过多抽运四波混频过程,产生四个携带该数据信息的闲频光,从而实现了单一信号的四信道光层组播功能,组播信道波长在35.2nm范围可调谐,组播信道最大间距4.4THz,最大转换效率-22dB,最优Q因子为5.3,该方法的特点在于基于光纤中的四波混频效应工作,因而具有对调制格式和比特率透明的优点,同时,光子晶体光纤特有的高非线与色散平坦性,既避免了使用传统光纤需要较长的长度,又避免了波长设置不灵活的弊端,并具备可进一步增加带宽和扩展信道的能力,且整个系统为全光纤设计,结构简单,性能可靠,并易于与现有的光纤通信系统相容等优点,对促进超高速大容量光子网络的发展具有重要意义.

All-optical multicasting is a key technology of future transparent photonic network, and in this paper it is presented and experimentally demonstrated based on four-wave mixing （FWM） with multi-frequency pump in 100 m dispersion flattened highly nonlinear photon crystal fiber （HNL-PCF）. A signal together with double orthogonal pumps is input into the PCF, and four idlers at new frequencies can be generated through degenerate multi-frequency pump FWM processes, which carry the same data information as the input signal and then a 4 x 10 Gbit/s wavelength multicasting has been obtained with a tunable operation wavelength range of 35.2 nm and total channel span of 4.4THz. The optimal conversion efficiency and the optimal Q factor are - 22 dB and 5.3, respectively. The system is transparent to both bit rate and modulation format. The advantage of this scheme consists in the ability of bandwidth, and the multicasting channel scalable due to dispersion flattening of PCF is used. Furthermore, it is all optical fiber, compact and robust, which makes it more competitive as well as easily accessible for the uses in practical optical communication systems.