MASc Seminar: Solutions to Mitigate XPM in Coherent Fiber-Optic Communications

Candidate: Nima Abbasi Firoozjah

Title: Solutions to Mitigate XPM in Coherent Fiber-Optic Communications

Date: August 15, 2019

Time: 3:00PM

Place: EIT 3142

Supervisor(s): Khandani, Amir K.

Abstract:

In this thesis, methods of exploiting and consequently, mitigating the nonlinearities in Cross-Phase Modulation (XPM) dominated fiber-optic communication is suggested using the model provided by Ciena corporation. An enhanced bit error rate (BER) is obtained using the solutions provided in this work compared to the state of the art methods used by Ciena. Moreover, an optimum signal constellation design is suggested considering the properties of optical fiber communication.

Coherent optical communication and specifically, phase-modulated optical communication has received much attention due to its higher spectral efficiency and also better receiver sensitivity. However, due to the optical Kerr effect, two major phase nonlinearities are added to the phase of the received signal at the end of an optical fiber link called Self-Phase Modulation (SPM) and Cross-Phase Modulation (XPM). This thesis is focused on XPM dominated fiber-optic links and tries to exploit the properties of XPM in order to obtain a better performance compared to the methods in which the cancellation of XPM noise is the main objective. 

Finally, an optimum signal design is discussed considering the model we use in this thesis. Optimum constellation design for XPM dominated fiber-optic channel has already been a topic of vast research, but the outcome of such efforts is highly dependant on the model used to produce XPM values. Thus, our work is unique in its own way.