Laser Photonics Rev. 7, No. 4, 539553 (2013) / DOI 10.1002/lpor.

201200050
LASER & PHOTONICS
REVIEWS
R
E
V
I
E
W
A
R
T
I
C
L
E
Abstract Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
can provide spectrally efcient communication channels be-
cause it can utilize carrier orthogonality and various impairment
mitigation methods. An optical OFDM signal can be generated
electronically to multiplex lower-rate carriers. In recent advance-
ments, OFDM signals are also shown to be generated and
demultiplexed by all-optical discrete Fourier transform (DFT),
overcoming the speed limit of electronics for >Tbps capacity.
High-performance DFT devices, such as arrayed waveguide
grating (AWG) or planar lightwave circuit (PLC), are critically
required to obtain strong orthogonality for scalable all-optical
OFDM (AO-OFDM) system implementations. Advanced tech-
niques such as coherent modulation and detection with dig-
ital impairment mitigation are also important for long-reach
AO-OFDM transmissions. More recently, optical superchannel
schemes have been introduced utilizing coherent detection for
multi-Tbps AO-OFDM transmissions. This paper reviews the
device and system aspects for the AO-OFDM technology, in-
cluding a generalized theoretical model to provide an indepth
understanding.
Optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexed
transmission using all-optical discrete Fourier transform
June-Koo K. Rhee
1,
, Neda Cvijetic
2
, Naoya Wada
3
, and Ting Wang
2
1. Introduction
The optical-ber communications research community has
achieved signicant technology breakthroughs to reach
ber channel capacities beyond 10 Tbps during the past
decade, and approached the physical limit of an optical-
ber channel. There are several experimental reports of 10
100 Tbps single-mode ber transmission [18], while
100-Gbps single-channel coherent communication
transceivers have recently become commercially avail-
able. The most important technology breakthroughs in
this area include single-carrier digital coherent optical
communication [3] with frequency- and time-domain
equalizations [9, 10], optical OFDM [1116], and
AO-OFDM [2, 68, 1733]. Single-carrier coherent com-
munication utilizes M-ary phase and amplitude shift keying
modulation, such as quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK)
and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), combined
with heterodyne detection and digital signal processing
adapted from mobile communication technologies, and
can successfully mitigate most ber-optic transmission
impairments. Transmission capacity can be extended
1
Dept. of Electrical Engineering, KAIST, 291 Daehangro, Yuseonggu Daejeon 305-701, S. Korea
2
NEC Laboratories America, 4 Independence Way Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
3
Institute of Information and Communications Technology, 4-2-1 Nukui-Kitamachi Koganei, Tokyo 184-8795, Japan

Corresponding author: e-mail: rhee.jk@kaist.edu.

even further with polarization diversity multiplexing
(PDM). Recently, experimental results and eld trials
demonstrating Tbps data transmission over ultralong haul
ber distances have been reported by many research
groups [1, 7, 8]. Meanwhile, the OFDM communication
technique exploited within the framework of mobile
communications has also been studied for ber-optic
transmission. With electronic OFDM multiplexing and
demultiplexing, optical-ber systems [13, 14] have shown
the potential for Tbps transmission.
All the aforementioned technologies largely depend
on the performance and capacity of electronic process-
ing, which is being rapidly developed to provide higher-
capacity and lower-cost implementations. However, the
capacity and power-consumption limits of electronic pro-
cessors present a bottleneck whenever scalability is con-
cerned, if compared with equivalent all-optical meth-
ods. Figure 1a shows a typical schematic design of an
optical OFDM system, which consists of an electronic
fast Fourier transform (FFT), digitalanalog and analog
digital converters (DACand ADC, respectively), optical in-
phase/quadrature-phase modulators (IQMOD), and optical
C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim
LASER &PHOTONICS
REVIEWS
540 J.-K. K. Rhee et al.: Optical OFDM transmission using all-optical discrete Fourier transform
Figure 1 (online color at:
www.lpr-journal.org) Schematic
designs of optical OFDM (a) and
all-optical OFDM (b). I/Q De-
mux(Demod) and I/Q Mux(Mod)
stand for in-phase/quadrature-
phase demultiplexer (demodula-
tor) and multiplexer (modulator)
in coherent communication,
respectively. ADC and DAC
stand for analog-to-digital and
digital-to-analog converters, re-
spectively. OH stands for optical
hybrid. For IM/DD AO-OFDM
communication, IQ Mod and OH
can be replaced with an onoff
modulator and photodetector,
respectively, and DAC/ADC
and M-ary Mod/Demod are not
required.
hybrid IQdetectors [15,16]. In general, the maximumavail-
able capacity of an optical OFDMis limited by the speed of
DACand ADC, as well as the power consumption and foot-
prints of silicon chips for FFTs and adaptive IQ detections.
Even though lab experiments have demonstrated single-
carrier optical OFDM capacity higher than Tbps by ofine
demodulation that is achieved by software processing, the
true real-time optical OFDM system can achieve only up
to 100 Gbps presently [17]. In order to scale the channel
capacity beyond single-carrier application, we can consider
multicarrier OFDM where carriers are all-optically multi-
plexed to have intercarrier orthogonality. Such all-optical
OFDM can overcome the electronic processing limit of
single-carrier systems, such as in wavelength division mul-
tiplexed (WDM) transmission that incorporates multiple
time division multiplex (TDM) channels in optical bers.
As shown in Fig. 1b, multicarrier optical data symbols
can be generated individually from optical carrier sources
[19]. In an AO-OFDM reference model by Lee et al. [20],
FFTs and serial-to-parallel and parallel-to-serial convert-
ers are replaced with all-optical DFTs and optical delays,
respectively, and hence the AO carrier multiplexing and
demultiplexing are achieved at multiples of the electronics
speed with nearly no power consumption. In addition, in-
stead of using a single fast DAC/ADC, optical IQ MOD,
and optical hybrid IQ demodulator, AO-OFDM is imple-
mented with many slower devices. Carrier orthogonality
can be preserved, even with arbitrary modulation formats
as long as the modulation periods are equal and synchro-
nized, providing modulation format transparency [7, 21].
Each carrier can be multiplexed by PDM to double the
transmission capacity [19].
The AO-OFDM scheme has further advanced to AO-
OFDM superchannel schemes, where optical carriers are
demultiplexed orthogonally by coherent multicarrier detec-
tion using an electrical FFT, instead of demultiplexing by an
all-optical DFT. In a typical embodiment of the superchan-
nel scheme, carriers are partitioned to several groups and
coherent multicarrier detection is applied locally to each
group. Nonetheless, the AO-OFDM superchannel trans-
mission utilizes the same carrier orthogonality properties
as an optically demultiplexed AO-OFDM. The rst AO-
OFDM superchannel system was demonstrated by Masuda
et al. [1], while the rst terabit AO-OFDMsuperchannel ex-
periment using QPSK modulation was achieved by Chan-
drasekhar et al. [22]. To mark a new phase of AO-OFDM
superchannel technology maturity, multi-Tbit/s AO-OFDM
superchannel eld trials using an all-optical OFDM trans-
mitter architecture with digital coherent carrier demulti-
plexing were shown in [7]. Finally, record-high AO-OFDM
spectral efciency using 16-QAM and beyond 10 000 km
transmission distance was demonstrated by Huang et al.
[23, 24].
This review paper is organized as follows. In
Section 2, a simple system-level theoretical model is pro-
vided to explain how optical orthogonality can be at-
tained by AO-OFDMschemes including superchannel con-
cept, followed by a review of AO-OFDM multiplexer
and demultiplexer device technologies in Section 3. In
Section 4, we introduce system demonstration reviews
of an AO-OFDM direct detection system and an AO-
OFDM superchannel system. Section 5 concludes the re-
view discussions with anticipated future developments and
applications.
C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.lpr-journal.org
REVIEW
ARTICLE
Laser Photonics Rev. 7, No. 4 (2013) 541
Figure 2 (online color at:
www.lpr-journal.org) Schematic
illustrations of the principle of
operation of all-optical OFDM
demultiplexer consisting of
delay array and DFT circuitry for
the output port n = 2, (a), as
an example, and its application
for a receiver, (b). In (a), the
sinusoidal curves indicate two
carriers that are delayed and
phase shifted.
2. Theoretical model for all optical OFDM
2.1. All optical OFDM transmitter and receiver
designs
When modulated carriers are packed too closely to each
other, so that carrier spectra overlap partially, it is critical
to demultiplex individual carriers while avoiding crosstalk.
An OFDM receiver demultiplexes closely packed carriers,
eliminating the intercarrier interference (ICI) at certain time
positions. In order to investigate the principle of operation,
let us consider a conceptual OFDM demultiplexer model at
a receiver, as illustrated in Fig. 2a with 4 carriers (N=4). An
all-optical OFDMreceiver implements two main functions:
a delay array for serial-to-parallel conversion and a DFT
processor [20, 25]. Denoted by T
m
() = e
j m
and
mn
=
e
j
2
N
mn
, respectively, the delay and DFT transfer functions
of the mth circuit path can be combined to produce the
frequency-domain transfer function for the nth carrier as
follows:
D
n
() =
1
N
N1

m=0
T
m
()
mn
=
1
N
N1

m=0
e
j (m+
2
N
mn)
n = 0, 1, . . , N 1,
(1)
where is the angular frequency, and is the chip pe-
riod. The OFDM symbol period is T = N. Accordingly,
the carrier spacing in the angular frequency is dened by

2
/
N
. Neglecting the constant time delay factor of
e
j (N1)
, we obtain
D
n
() =
1
N
N1

m=0
e
j m(n)
n = 0, 1, . . , N 1.
(2)
In order to gain an insight into the demultiplexing pro-
cess, Fig. 2 shows two input carriers
1
=and
2
=2,
modulated by a rectangle function of duration of 2 4
(two symbols in the same modulation state) arriving at the
demultiplexer, as an example. From inspection of Fig. 2, it
is evident that the delaying and phasing of the replicas of
the carrier
1
create destructive interference, whereas all
the replicas of
2
sum up constructively. It is also worth
observing that complete orthogonality between the two car-
riers holds only for a certain period, where all the replicas
for each carrier interfere destructively. Figure 2b is the
corresponding receiver system model in which N optical
detectors can be incorporated.
In principle, orthogonality is preserved with any kind of
modulation format as long as i) each modulation state lasts
for T
o
= N or longer, where the cyclic prex T

= K
is dened by temporal duration in excess of N, ii) the
rise and fall times of modulation are short enough com-
pared with , and iii) the modulation is applied to all
carriers with the same modulator clock phases so that
all the carriers arrive at the receiver at the same time,
in order to arrange ICI from all other carriers such that
it is located on the symbol boundaries in the time do-
main. The resulting symbol congurations are illustrated
in Fig. 3, in which the ICI-free region is indicated by the
white space in the time domain; Figs. 3a and b depict how
ICI free periods are formed by all-optic DFT processes
due to destructive interference. This property allows the
use of advanced modulation formats such as M-ary phase
shift key (PSK), QAM, and even another layer of optical
OFDM, as well as simple nonreturn-to-zero onoff keying
(NRZ-OOK) for intensity-modulation/direct-detection
(IM/DD) systems and differential PSK (DPSK). In this
sense, AO-OFDM is modulation-format transparent.
Figure 4 shows a more precise numerical analysis
to illustrate the orthogonality behavior in a 4-carrier
(N = 4) transmission system with a carrier spacing
B

/
2
of 10 GHz, corresponding to a symbol period of
T
o
= N = 100 ps. In order to show that ICI occurs only
when a carrier is modulated, i.e. only on the boundary
between symbols, unit step modulation is applied to a
carrier at 195.00 THz in the systemmodel shown in Fig. 4a.
The corresponding demultiplexed optical waveforms are
plotted in Fig. 4b: The target signal waveformat the 195.00-
THz carrier frequency is demultiplexed to form a slowly
increasing optical power waveform, and ICI waveforms for
other carrier output ports of other frequencies are shown in
the plots for ICIs. All ICI waveforms last only for a period
of T
o
, and hence one can infer that if carriers are modulated
at every T
o
, an interference-free time position can be found
at every T
o
, as indicated with red arrows in the plots. This
behavior in two-carrier experiments was rst demonstrated
www.lpr-journal.org C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim
LASER &PHOTONICS
REVIEWS
542 J.-K. K. Rhee et al.: Optical OFDM transmission using all-optical discrete Fourier transform
Figure 3 (online color at: www.lpr-
journal.org) A schematic illustration
of an OFDM symbol structure
shown in the time domain; is
the OFDM sampling space, and
T
o
= N and T = k are the
minimum symbol and cyclic prex
periods, respectively, in an N = 4
carrier OFDM system. (a) and (b)
represent optical carriers produced
by short optical pulses; (c) and (d)
by a cw source. The color codes in-
dicate phase rotation of the carrier
with respect to a reference carrer
frequency, e.g. the rst carrier. (b)
and (d) compare how cyclic pre-
xes can be applied in pulsed and
cw mode OFDM symbol structures.
Symbol values are dectected only
in the ICI-free regions.
by Sanjoh et al. [18] and its 30 100 Gb/s transmission
is achieved by Sano [19]. Because the interference-free
interval is narrow compared to a symbol period, as shown
in Fig. 3, the demultiplexed symbol should be sampled op-
tically at each output port of an AO-OFDM demultiplexer
or electrically after optical-to-electrical conversion in
conjunction with digital signal processing. As depicted in
Fig. 3d [18], the modulation symbol period T can be made
longer than T
o
, keeping the rise and fall times unchanged,
to increase the interference-free range. This is equivalent to
adding a cyclic prex (Fig. 3b) used in conventional OFDM
transmission systems [25, 26]. The cyclic prex is also
used to mitigate time-domain impairments in fading radio
channels, for example. The same application can mitigate
chromatic dispersion effects of the optical-ber medium
[27, 34].
An OFDMtransmitter is required to produce frequency-
locked optical carriers that exactly match the optical fre-
quencies of the OFDM demultiplexer of the receiver. There
are several transmitter designs that can generate such fre-
quency arrangements. A comb spectrum source, produced
by a modelocked laser or by a continuous wave (cw) laser
modulated by an over-driven phase modulator, is the most
widely adopted method. A comb spectrum is used to gen-
erate optical OFDM carriers through aggregation with a
pulse-mode AO-OFDM multiplexer or a cw-mode AO car-
rier multiplexer.
The most comprehensive transmitter model that can
present insights into AO-OFDM communication is a
pulse-mode transmitter model with a pulsed optical source
as shown in Fig. 5, which gives an immediate analogy with
electrically generated OFDM symbols [20]. A short pulse
train with a pulse width narrower or equal to generated
by a modelocked laser diode at a repetition rate B is split
into N replicas, and each of them is individually modulated
and fed into each input port of the AO-OFDM multiplexer
(MUX). An input pulse at an input port i is split into N
replicas for all different output ports k =0, 1, . . N1. Pulses
shown in the boxes of the gure indicate the time positions
of optical signal with respect to the OFDM symbol
slots. The iDFT block introduces phase shifts between
input port i and output port k according to the following
expression:

i k
e
j
2
N
i k
. (3)
This is the same as the discrete Fourier transform (DFT)
used in the electrical OFDMcommunication. At the outputs
of the iDFT block, a set of optical delays are introduced as
shown in Fig. 5. This delay array has delays of multiples of
C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.lpr-journal.org
REVIEW
ARTICLE
Laser Photonics Rev. 7, No. 4 (2013) 543
Figure 4 (online color at:
www.lpr-journal.org) A numer-
ical example of AO-OFDM
demultiplexer characteristics for
a 410 GHz OFDM system, (a)
system model where the laser
is modulated to a on state at
t = 100 ps, (b) demultiplexed
signal and ICIs into other carrier
ports after demultiplex. Red
arrows indicate the time-domain
sampling positions for data
recovery at the center of each
symbol period that corresponds
to a 10 Gbit/s data rate.
Figure 5 (online color at: www.lpr-journal.org) Conceptual
schematic of all-optical ODFM multiplexer of a pulse-mode trans-
mitter design. The spectrum illustrations on the bottom shows the
modulation broadening.
and N delayed signals are combined by a standard N 1
coupler, providing parallel-to-serial conversion. The corre-
sponding output of this OFDM symbol includes multiple
carriers with designated frequencies. Applying the same
analysis used to obtain Eq. (2), we nd the OFDM multi-
plexer function for the ith carrier input as
M
i
() =
1
N
N1

k=0
e
j k(i )
. (4)
At the receiver, the same principle of operation is ap-
plied, following the system model of Eq. (1). The symbols
are delayed by a matched set of an optical delay array,
followed by the DFT, output signals ltering, and photode-
tection to recover the input data.
In order to construct the mathematical model for pulse-
mode OFDM signal multiplexing and demultiplexing, let
us consider single-pulse propagation through an input port
i and output port n at an AO-OFDM multiplexer and de-
multiplexer, respectively. The frequency-domain amplitude
representation of a single pulse for the ith carrier can be de-
ned as A
i
() = a
i
(), where a
i
and () denote the
data modulation and the modulation spectrum of the pulse,
respectively. Here, the pulse width is assumed to be the
same as . The corresponding OFDM signal is represented
www.lpr-journal.org C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim
LASER &PHOTONICS
REVIEWS
544 J.-K. K. Rhee et al.: Optical OFDM transmission using all-optical discrete Fourier transform
as
S
i
() = A
i
()M
i
() =
1
N
a
i
()
N1

k=0
e
j k(i )
.
(5)
Then an optical pulse sequentially propagating through the
system from the ith port of an AO-OFDM multiplexer to
the nth port of a demultiplexer is obtained by
R
i,n
() = S
i
()D
n
()
=
1
N
2
a
i
()
N1

m=0
N1

k=0
e
j k(i )
e
j m(n)
.
(6)
The corresponding time-domain representation of the re-
ceived and demultiplexed signal can be obtained by a
Fourier transform:
r
i,n
(t ) =
1
2

R
i,n
()e
j t
d.
Using the Fourier transform () =

(t

)e
j t

dt

,
where (t ) is the time-domain representation of (), and

e
j (t t

k+m)
d = 2(t t

k +m), we ob-
tain the optical eld of the demultiplexed signal as
r
i,n
(t ) =
1
N
2
a
i
N1

m=0
N1

k=0
e
2j (ki mn)/N
(t (k m)).
(7)
The evaluation of Eq. (7) for i = n is zero at t = sT
(= s N) for integer s as long as (t ) = 0 for |t | > /2.
For the case of i =n, i.e. for the target carrier being demul-
tiplexed, we nd
r
i,i
(t ) =
1
N
2
a
i

N(t ) +
N1

p=1
(N p)((t p)e
2j ( pi /N)
+ (t + p)e
2j ( pi /N)
)

.
(8)
When N carriers are multiplexed with data modulation of
each carrier x
i
(t ) =

s
a
i s
(t sT), where a
is
is the data
sequence of the ith carrier, the output at the demultiplexer
port is given by
r
n
(t ) =
1
N
2
N1

i =0
N1

m=0
N1

k=0
e
2j (ki mn)/N
x
i
(t (k m)).
(9)
It is noted that in a pulse-mode AO-OFDM transmitter, the
performance of the optical data modulator can be eased
because orthogonality depends on the performance of the
AO-OFDM multiplexer and the shape of the pulse.
A cw-mode AO-OFDM transmitter generates a multi-
plexed OFDM signal either from a comb spectrum source
or by a set of frequency-controlled cw sources. Figure 6a
shows the key principles of AO-OFDMsuperchannel gener-
ation that can be demultiplexed and demodulated by digital
coherent carrier multiplexing [1, 8, 22, 27], which has been
widely exploited in high-speed AO-OFDM transmission
experiments. At the transmitter, a multitone generator can
be used as an optical multicarrier source with phase-locked
optical tones at integer multiples of the driving source clock
frequency B. Such a multicarrier source can be realized
using a mode-locked laser synchronized at its fundamen-
tal frequency [28], concatenated overdriven optical phase
modulators [6, 35], or a recirculating loop where a new
tone is generated at each pass through the loop [23]. In
the case of multicarrier tone generation via wideband fre-
quency modulation, the optical powers of the generated
Figure 6 (online color at: www.lpr-journal.org) Conceptual schematic of cw-mode all-optical ODFMtransmitter designs by the use of (a)
phase-locked tone generation for superchannel generation, and (b) individual free-running cw carrier sources with precise wavelength
control. The AO carrier MUXs in both designs can be achieved by various design options. Tones and carriers are generated with exact
carrier spacing B. The modulators can use advanced coherent modulation formats at the B baud rate.
C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.lpr-journal.org
REVIEW
ARTICLE
Laser Photonics Rev. 7, No. 4 (2013) 545
carriers will follow an nth-order Bessel function of the rst
kind, such that intercarrier power variation can be large.
A exible band WSS [36] can then be employed with an
all-optical carrier demultiplexer to equalize the intercarrier
powers, while an optical carrier demultiplexer, such as an
AWG, can be used to separate the orthogonal frequency
components.
A comprehensive understanding of orthogonality can
be extended from the fact that orthogonality is indepen-
dent of carriercarrier phase correlation, as inferred from
Fig. 4. As shown in Fig. 6b, a set of free-running cw lasers
can produce AO-OFDM carriers as long as the laser fre-
quencies are precisely tuned to the receiver AO-OFDM
demultiplexer frequencies and the modulation clock phases
are aligned to produce orthogonality. In this conguration,
however, the instantaneous power waveform of an OFDM
symbol is not deterministic because the carriers are not
phase-locked. Subsequently, when coherent detection with
electrical adaptive equalization by digital signal processing
is used at a receiver, the impact of ICI may not be elimi-
nated as it manifests fast beat noise uctuation due to fast
phase rotations of free-running sources. In addition, ber
nonlinearity impairments may not be deterministic, mak-
ing nonlinear penalty equalization by receiver digital signal
processing difcult. Nonetheless, this scheme can also be
modulation-format transparent.
A generalized mathematical model for cw-mode AO-
OFDM can be obtained by modication of Eqs. (5) and
(6). A modulated carrier i with a modulation spectrum
S
i
() = a
i
(i), where () is the modulation spec-
trum due to optical data modulation, propagating through
the OFDM system to an AO-OFDM demultiplexer at the
receiver through the nth port is denoted by
R
i,n
() = S
i
()D
n
() =
1
N
a
i
( i )
N1

m=0
e
j m(n)
.
(10)
Using the similar derivation for Eq. (7), we obtain the
corresponding time-domain representation of the optical
eld of the demultiplexed signal as
r
i,n
(t ) =
1
N
a
i
e
j i t
N1

m=0
e
2j m(i n)/N
(t +m) (11)
The evaluation of Eq. (11) with step-function modulation
in the N =4 example is shown in Fig. 4. For i =n, Eq. (11)
is simplied as
r
i,i
(t ) =
1
N
a
i
e
j i t
N1

m=0
(t +m). (12)
The carrier modulation symbol a
i
can be detected by direct
or coherent detection. For i = n, Eq. (11) is zero at t = sT
for integer s as long as (t ) = 0 for |t | > T/2. This is
an important modulator requirement for a cw-mode AO-
OFDM transmitter.
Figure 7 (online color at: www.lpr-journal.org) AO-OFDM sym-
bol propagation in dispersive ber observed at different output
ports of the AO-OFDM demultiplexer with 20 km of SMF28 ber
inserted in the setup shown in Fig. 4a, for comparison with the
waveforms of Fig. 4b. Red arrows indicate a reasonable choice
of the subrate sampling positions for data recovery.
2.2. Subrate OFDM Transmission
In an optical OFDM system, transmission impairments can
cause two-fold penalties of intersymbol interference (ISI)
and intercarrier interferences (ICI). The ISI penalty in an
OFDMsystemis the same as that of a single-carrier system.
On the other hand, the ICI degrades the orthogonal property
of an OFDM system, and hence can be more critical than
the ISI penalty. As an example, orthogonality degradation
due to ber chromatic dispersion (CD) penalty is more
severe if the OFDM symbol bandwidth exceeds 100 GHz.
In order to model an example of CD penalty in an AO-
OFDM demultiplexing, Eq. (10) can be modied as
R
i,n
() = S
i
()C()D
n
()
=
1
N
a
i
( i ) e
j
2
/2
N1

m=0
e
j m(n)
.
(13)
Here, the ber CDtransfer function C() = e
j
2
/2
is used,
where = DL
2
/2c; D, L, , and c, are the ber CD
coefcient, ber length, wavelength, and speed of light,
respectively. Using the system model of Fig. 4a with a
ber inserted in front of the demultiplexer, the ISI and ICI
behaviors are evaluated by a numerical Fourier transform
of Eq. (13). This data shows a 4-carrier example where
the carrier at 195.00-THz turns on at t = 100 ps, and the
corresponding ISI and ICIs are observed at the receiver
AO-OFDM demultiplexer ports as shown in Fig. 7. From
the data plots, one can see the ISI and ICI are spread in the
time domain, making the orthogonal property poor. In order
to mitigate such interference penalties, the OFDM carrier
baud rate B
C
can be lowered belowBso that detection points
www.lpr-journal.org C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim
LASER &PHOTONICS
REVIEWS
546 J.-K. K. Rhee et al.: Optical OFDM transmission using all-optical discrete Fourier transform
can be sampled at a lower rate as can be seen in compar-
ison of Fig. 4b and Fig. 7. Such subrate OFDM transmis-
sion can be achieved by cyclic prex insertion and subrate
(B
C
<B) modulation in the pulse-mode [27, 34] and cw-
mode [18,25,26] AO-OFDMtransmission systems, respec-
tively. The use of subrate modulation is also equivalent to
the insertion of a temporal guard band between symbols.
2.3. Superchannel digital coherent
demultiplexing
A superchannel can be regarded as a bank of AO-OFDM
carriers that can be generated by the scheme discussed in
Fig. 6a of Section 2.1. Figure 8 illustrates the key principle
of digital coherent carrier demultiplexing of AO-OFDMsu-
perchannel, which has been widely exploited in high-speed
AO-OFDM transmission experiments. In this scheme, op-
tical carriers are modulated in parallel using a bank of op-
tical modulators (Fig. 6a). As aforementioned, the typical
modulation format used for each optical carrier can be ar-
bitrary; specically, either OFDM or single-carrier (SC)
modulation in the form of M-ary PSK (M-PSK) or M-ary
quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) can be used
on each optical carrier, without loss of generality. In the
case of SC transmission per optical carrier, the baud rate
per carrier B
C
should be less than or equal to the frequency
spacing of the all-optical carriers B to ensure digital carrier
demultiplexing can be performed with low distortion, as
aforementioned. For the special case of zero-guard-interval
OFDM, B = B
C
. It is also noted that, apart from the all-
optical tone generator, the AO-OFDM approach with SC
per-carrier modulation can use identical transmitters and
receivers as those developed for 100 Gb/s coherent sys-
tems, which is attractive from the system-upgrade point of
view. The aggregate data rate of the AO-OFDM superchan-
nel can then be scaled by simply increasing the number of
optically generated carriers and SC transceivers.
At the receiver side, to detect an all-optical carrier of
interest, a cw local oscillator (LO) laser can be tuned near
the carrier center frequency, essentially downconverting the
target optical signal to the electrical baseband by an opti-
cal hybrid. Following such LO-based downconversion, a
Figure 8 (online color at: www.lpr-journal.org) Digital coherent
AO-OFDM carrier demultiplexing. LO: local oscillator; PD: pho-
todetector; ADC: analog-to-digital converter; FDE: frequency do-
main equalizer; TDE: time-domain equalizer; CR: carrier recov-
ery; SD: symbol detection.
standard coherent receiver front-end can be used for digital
coherent carrier demultiplexing [8]. If the bandwidth of the
coherent receiver front-end is sufciently wide, it is also
possible to detect multiple carriers per transceiver by plac-
ing the LO midway between the target carriers and using
DSP to accomplish any residual baseband shifting prior to
digital impairment compensation.
To process the target AO-OFDM carriers with low dis-
tortion, the analog-digital converter (ADC) bandwidth and
oversampling rate must be high enough to capture suf-
cient energy of main and side lobes (Fig. 8). It is also
noted that the ADC bandwidth and oversampling rate re-
quirements also increase with constellation size. Following
digitization, residual CD must be rst compensated using a
frequency-domain equalizer (FDE) [9] to restore orthogo-
nality between the carriers. For a DSP sampling rate that is
M times the carrier symbol baud rate, the carrier of interest
can be demultiplexed digitally by initializing an adaptive
time-domain equalizer (TDE) [10] with coefcients that
are equal to the rst column of an M-point FFT matrix.
In other words, the TDE coefcients are initialized so as
to have a frequency response of an M-point FFT, where
M < N is equivalent to the number of AO-OFDM carriers
being jointly processed in DSP. This is done in order to
have a sufciently high oversampling rate so as to perform
the partial digital coherent carrier demultiplexing without
incurring too much penalty. It is noted that this differs from
conventional OFDM, wherein the entire OFDM band is
captured and a single-joint FFT is used for carrier demul-
tiplexing. It is also noted that the TDE both demultiplexes
the carrier(s) of interest and equalizes the residual impulse
response of the channel. The TDE coefcients can subse-
quently be adapted using any commonly used algorithmfor
SC systems, such as common modulus or decision-directed
algorithms [10]. Finally, carrier recovery (CR) and symbol
detection (SD) are performed. Consequently, notwithstand-
ing potentially higher oversampling requirements and the
need for proper initialization of the adaptive TDE, digi-
tal carrier demultiplexing for AO-OFDM can be performed
largely using the same DSP algorithms as those exploited in
current-generation 100 Gb/s digital coherent transmission
systems.
3. Device technologies for all-optical DFT
There are several device technologies that provide the all-
optical DFT function for OFDM multiplexing and demul-
tiplexing, including the multimode coupler design used in
arrayed waveguide gratings (AWG), the waveguide-and-
coupler mesh (WCM) design, and the ber Bragg gratings
(FBG) design. In this section, we review the design prin-
ciples of AWG and WCM devices, as these are widely
adopted device technologies.
3.1. AWG-based DFT device design
A decade ago, when OFDM was not yet widely stud-
ied as a research topic for optical communications, an
C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.lpr-journal.org
REVIEW
ARTICLE
Laser Photonics Rev. 7, No. 4 (2013) 547
Figure 9 (online color at: www.lpr-journal.org) AWG congura-
tion consisting of delay array and DFT.
AO-OFDM-capable AWG device was rst designed to be
used not for DFT, but for generation and processing of
optical codes in packet switching or optical code-division
multiple access (OCDMA) systems [37, 38]. A specially
designed AWG with a two-slab coupler connected by an ar-
ray of waveguides (Fig. 9) can produce and detect OCDMA
codes with Fourier coding, which is equivalent to OFDM
symbols, as discussed in [20].
The rst slab waveguide distributes the input from
the single port to the waveguide array consisting of N
waveguides with incremental delay differences of to
perform serialparallel conversion as illustrated in Fig. 2a.
The waveguide ports on the second slab coupler are
carefully placed to produce the Nth-order DFT phase
relations between N input and N output ports, i.e. the DFT
of a parallel optical eld input signal a
m
(m = 0,1, . . N1)
produces a parallel optical eld output b
n
(n =0,1, . . N1)
as depicted in Fig. 10a, according to the denition
Figure 10 (online color at: www.lpr-journal.org) Slab coupler
conguration (a), and its equivalent two-lens imaging system
model (b).
of DFT:
b
n
=
N1

m=0
a
m

mn
=
N1

m=0
a
m
e
j
2
N
mn
. (14)
It is interesting to observe that the slab coupler of Fig. 10a
performs the spatial DFT equivalently to a two-lens system
separated by a focal length f, as illustrated in Fig. 10b,
where the curvature radius R of the slabs equals the
focal length f. In this design, the light distribution in the
output plane is a Fourier transform of the input object,
and this concept forms the basis of the entire optical
information processor. As an example, we can obtain the
DFT function Eq. (14), by equally spacing the input and
output waveguides. In [37], a relevant conguration of the
AWG design for the multiport encoder/decoder (or DFT
device) has been realized: In this design, the array pitches d
and d
o
of Fig. 10a have to satisfy the following condition:
d = d
0
=

R
N
, l = R, (15)
where l is the slab length. In addition, the delay difference
introduced by two adjacent waveguides should satisfy
the condition = 1/BN, where B is the OFDM symbol
rate. The same AWG architecture has been described in
[26, 31, 33]. In some previous publications, the confocal
slab couplers that perform the DFT have been replaced by
a set of phase shifters [18, 20].
The same AWG device can also be used to generate
OFDM symbols. If a single short laser pulse is fed back-
ward to one of the output ports of an AWG of Fig. 9, the
corresponding Fourier code is simultaneously generated at
the device input port. Each optical Fourier code is equiva-
lent to an AO-OFDM symbol that corresponds to a carrier
and the orthogonality between the code detection is used to
demultiplex OFDM carrier at the receiver.
3.2. Coupler-based DFT device design
A device that performs DFT in the optical domain can
be attained by different physical implementations. The rst
architecture that performs the DFTwas proposed by Marhic
[39] and revisited in a work by Siegman [40]. The WCM
composed of passive couplers and phase shifters shown in
Fig. 10a performs the DFT of a parallel optical eld input
signal a
m
(m = 0,1, . . N1) to produce a parallel optical
eld output b
n
(n = 0,1, . . N1), according to Eq. (4). The
Nth-order DFT of the parallel input signal is evaluated by
a chain of log
2
N stages, wherein each stage is composed of
2 2 3-dB couplers that are equivalent to the second-order
DFT as shown in Fig. 11b.
These schemes make the DFT have a parallel input. To
be used in optical communications, where data symbols are
serially transmitted on a ber, a serial-to-parallel converter,
composed of a splitter and a set of delay lines, is required,
as shown in Fig. 12. To realize a complete AO-OFDM
www.lpr-journal.org C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim
LASER &PHOTONICS
REVIEWS
548 J.-K. K. Rhee et al.: Optical OFDM transmission using all-optical discrete Fourier transform
Figure 11 Waveguide and coupler mesh schematic diagram (a)
composed of couplers and phase shifters that perform the DFT
of N = 8 parallel inputs. The phase shifters are represented by
the boxes with phase-shift values 2q/N, where q is indicated
inside the boxes; and (b) the mathematical model for the 2 2
coupler.
demultiplexer design, this schematic should be incorporated
with optical delay arrays as shown in Fig. 12, which was
fabricated for the rst time by Takiguchi et al. [41, 42].
The same principle has also been used for 2 2 DFT
signal processing in an all-optical OFDM [21]. In addition,
a generalization of the architectures of Figs. 11 and 12,
replacing the 2 2 couplers with M M hybrids has been
proposed [43].
The DFT schemes of Figs. 11 and 12 are highly sensi-
tive to small phase errors on all waveguides since a WCMis
a complex interferometer, wherein multiple MachZehnder
interferometers (MZI) are nested with one another, as stud-
ied in [44]. According to this report, a WCM device is
more sensitive to device-fabrication errors of waveguide
phase-shift control than an equivalent AWG device. In or-
der to overcome this drawback, a new conguration of the
waveguide DFT approach was formulated for a discrete se-
rial input by Cincotti [45], and reinvestigated in [46]. In this
novel design as shown in Fig. 13, the time delay array is
repositioned into MZIs, and MZIs are separated from one
another through a tree architecture, as shown in Fig. 13:
Figure 13 (online color at: www.lpr-journal.org) Cascaded op-
tical FFT composed of MZIs with couplers and phase shifters,
which provides AO-OFDMdemultiplexing equivalent to combined
functions of serial-to-parallel conversion, delay arrays, and DFT.
The time delays and phase shifters are represented by the boxes
with time-delay values (multiples of ) and phase shift values
(fractions of ), respectively.
The Nth-order DFT is then obtained by a chain of log
2
N
stages, each of which consists of an MZI with an output
coupler.
This architecture has been fabricated by Hillerkeuss
et al. [43] (Fig. 14) and used in the record-breaking 26
Tbit/s transmission experiment [6]. In this design, N carri-
ers can be demultiplexed in M (< N) carrier AO-OFDM,
and hence each output of the AO-OFDM output port has
N/M carriers, showing a cyclic pattern in the spectrum. The
multiple carriers of a port are separated by a coarse WDM
demultiplexer. Overall, this hybrid design of a cascaded op-
tical FFTand WDMdemultiplexer has demonstrated device
efciency as well as strong performance.
4. System implementations
As discussed throughout this review paper, several
advanced all-optical techniques exist for all-optical
DFT/IDFT processing, which can benet from the ad-
vantages of modulation format transparency, compact all-
optical implementation, and high-speed all-optical signal
generation and detection beyond the limit of the bandwidth
of electronic components.
Figure 12 (online color at:
www.lpr-journal.org) From [42]:
Planar waveguide circuit for the
8 8 DFT. The time delay in-
troduced by L corresponds to
, where and L are the effec-
tive refractive index and the unit
length difference of the delay ar-
ray waveguide, respectively.
C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.lpr-journal.org
REVIEW
ARTICLE
Laser Photonics Rev. 7, No. 4 (2013) 549
4.1. System demonstrations of IM-DD
AO-OFDM transmission
In the early development of AO-OFDM, there have been
a few reports of two-carrier IM-DD AO-OFDM demon-
strations [18], followed by several reports of system per-
formance studies [20]. Nonetheless, experimental demon-
strations for practical applications have been achieved only
recently [25, 26]. More recently, a reference AO-OFDM
design with IM/DD that is depicted in Fig. 5 [20] has been
demonstrated experimentally by Shimizu et al. [33].
Figure 15a shows the experimental schematic of 12.5-
Gbps 8-carrier AWG-based AO-OFDM transmitter and
receiver [33]. An optical comb for eight carriers with
12.5 GHz frequency spacing is generated from a cw light
source with two cascaded EAMs modulated by 25 GHz
and 12.5 GHz clocks, respectively. The frequency of the
cw light source is 193.4875 THz. The optical comb is then
split into two replicas and modulated by 12.5 Gbit/s pseu-
dorandom bit sequence (PRBS) in an NRZ-OOK format
with pattern lengths of 2
15
1 and 2
31
1 for odd and even
channels, respectively. Each modulated data signal is split
into four branches and sent to the AWG-based OFDM mul-
tiplexer. Each branch has a different delay for data pattern
decorrelation. The polarizations and powers of all the car-
riers are aligned by polarization controllers and variable
optical attenuators, respectively. The AWG used in this ex-
periment has 16 ports with 12.5 GHz carrier spacing. At the
receiver side, the signal is sent to the AWG-based OFDM
demultiplexer. The demultiplexed signal is applied to the
Figure 14 From [6]: Cascaded
optical-FFT and coarse-WDM
AO-OFDM receiver model for
a 325-carrier 26-Tbps transmis-
sion demonstration. Note that
a conventional WDM demulti-
plexer is used before electroab-
sorption modulators (EAMs).
EAMs are used to time sample
the optical symbol at the orthog-
onal points.
Figure 15 (online color at: www.lpr-journal.org) Pulse-mode AWG AO-OFDM system; (a) system schematic for IM-DD AO-OFDM
transmission of 8 12.5 Gbps, (b) demultiplexed receiver output optical eye diagram of carrier 5, (c) ICI waveform in carrier 5 output
fromcarrier 6, and (d) BERperformance. LD: laser diode, EAM: electroabsorption modulator, LN-IM: LiNbO
3
intensity modulator, AWG:
arrayed waveguide grating, VOA: variable optical attenuator, PC: polarization controller, Rx: receiver, PPG: pulse pattern generator,
BERT: bit error rate tester.
www.lpr-journal.org C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim
LASER &PHOTONICS
REVIEWS
550 J.-K. K. Rhee et al.: Optical OFDM transmission using all-optical discrete Fourier transform
EAM to extract the orthogonal point in the symbol time
slot. The corresponding demultiplexed output eye diagram
of the target carrier is shown in Fig. 14b. In this design, a
waveform reshaping modulator is employed at the receiver
side, which provides time-domain equalization (TDE) to
compensate for the AWG demultiplexing error. As a result,
TDE can achieve efcient ICI cancellation at the sampling
point as shown in Fig. 15, restoring orthogonality. This ex-
periment conrms that the BER is reduced to 10
6
from
10
4
by the use of TDE.
4.2. System demonstrations of high-speed
AO-OFDM superchannel transmission
In recent years, signicant advances in high-speed AO-
OFDM superchannel technology and transmission capa-
bilities have occurred. Such optical superchannels using
AO-OFDM are thus quite promising for realizing aggre-
gate transmission data rates beyond 100 Gb/s, by enabling
exible capacity scaling via parallel addition of transmit-
ters and receivers. At the transmitter side, the AO-OFDM
superchannel approach is implemented based on optical
methods to generate phase-locked optical carriers, fol-
lowed by individual modulation of each carrier as a par-
allel channel. At the receiver side, the optical carriers can
either be demodulated optically via an optical DFT cir-
cuit, or electrically by rst downconverting a spectral slice
of the AO-OFDM to the electrical domain with a digi-
tal coherent receiver, then applying a digital fast Fourier
transform (FFT). However, since CD destroys orthogonal-
ity between carriers, precise all-optical CD compensation
must be performed prior to optical detection if an optical
Fourier transform circuit is used, which can be a challenge
to fully accomplish in the optical domain. On the other
hand, the digital FFT can be implemented in receiver-side
DSP as a complement to functions already implemented
in typical 100 Gbit/s systems, including such as electronic
CD compensation. Consequently, existing optical and elec-
trical hardware developed for 100 Gb/s systems can to
a large extent be reused, such that software-dened up-
grades to beyond 100 Gb/s transmission become possi-
ble. In this section, we consider experimental system-level
considerations for high-speed AO-OFDM superchannel
transmission.
The system-level setup of the 21.7-Tbit/s AO-OFDM
eld trial over 1503 km of installed standard single-mode
ber (SSMF) achieved in [7] is shown in Fig. 16. In to-
tal, 22 external cavity lasers (ECLs) were used as seed
lasers to produce 330 AO-OFDM carriers, with either
polarization multiplexed QPSK or 8-QAM modulation
used on each carrier, depending on the underlying chan-
nel quality. The optical tone generator consisted of sepa-
rate phase modulators overdriven with sine-wave inputs,
such that phase-locked optical carriers at 25 GHz spac-
ing were created for each seed laser. A exible band WSS
was used to equalize the optical carrier powers, as well
as it combined the carriers from the odd and even
groups into a single output. On each carrier, the symbol
rate R
s
= 12.5 Gbaud was exploited, with the per-carrier
modulation format decided based on spectral efciency
requirements and optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR)
conditions.
Following eld-installed SSMF transmission, as in
Fig. 16, a WSS was used to lter out the target super-
channel, while an ECL LO was tuned to downconvert the
Figure 16 (online color at:
www.lpr-journal.org) System-
level experimental setup of
21.7Tbit/s AO-OFDM eld trial
with transmitter and receiver
side spectra and experimental
bit error rate (BER) results [7].
C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.lpr-journal.org
REVIEW
ARTICLE
Laser Photonics Rev. 7, No. 4 (2013) 551
target AO-OFDM carriers for digital carrier demultiplex-
ing. Specically, the LO was tuned midway between two
optical carriers, which were jointly processed in ofine DSP
as described in Fig. 8 with 30 GHz input bandwidth and
6 times (M = 6) oversampling. Additional details of the
system demonstration may be found in [7]. As shown by
the BER results in the inset of Fig. 16, 18 PDM 8-QAM su-
perchannels were successfully transmitted over 1503 km of
eld-deployed SSMF within the BER limit of 4.5 10
3
for 7% overhead hard-decision forward error correction,
while 4 PM QPSK superchannels achieved the same trans-
mission distance with more margin. By exhibiting both
the highest eld-trial capacity (21.7 Tbps) and the high-
est capacitydistance product (32.6 Pbps km) to date, the
experimental demonstration conrms the promising spec-
tral efciency and aggregate transmission rate capabili-
ties of AO-OFDM for future >Tbit/s optical transmission
systems.
5. Conclusions and further study
All-optical OFDM techniques have rapidly gained interest
in the optical data transmission community in recent years,
even though research efforts on this topic were initially
started on academic grounds. Nowadays, the principle
understandings of orthogonality in multicarrier optical
data transmission form the basis for Tbps superchannel
and other highly spectrally efcient transmission systems
for next-generation applications. This paper has discussed
recent developments in AO-OFDM techniques, including
a theoretical investigation of optical system require-
ments, a review of AO-OFDM multiplexer/demultiplexer
device technologies, and recent state-of-the-art system
demonstrations of AO-OFDM IM/DD and superchannel
systems.
An AO-OFDM transmission system is modulation-
format transparent, meaning that different carriers can be
congured in different ways, enabling a mixture of low-
cost direct detection and more advanced coherent detection
for short-haul and long-haul transmission scenarios, respec-
tively. Such exibility with high spectral efciency can be
scaled to enable exible hybrid optical networks that can
be utilized for optical ow switching and optical waveband
switching. In addition, AO-OFDM processing can signif-
icantly reduce overall energy consumption, and overcome
current energy consumption limits to enable beyond-Tbps
optical transmission systems.
Although AO-OFDM technology has rapidly advanced
with proof-of-concept demonstrations and eld trials, there
are many unsolved problems to be addressed in practical
applications. First, various optical DFT device and sys-
tem technologies need to be investigated in order to max-
imize AO-OFDM carrier orthogonality in nonideal condi-
tions. A good example in this avenue was reported in [6],
where a high-order optical DFT was achieved by a com-
bination of a low-order optical DFT and a conventional
WDM demultiplexer. In addition, orthogonality can also
be improved with optical signal processing as discussed
in [33], where optical time-domain equalization is used to
compensate for the AO-OFDMdemultiplexer design errors.
Moreover, there exist various device-design solutions that
can improve the accuracy of lter functions of optical DFT
devices. Secondly, ber transmission impairment mitiga-
tion technologies have to be exploited to optimize system
performance against ber chromatic dispersion and non-
linearity. For example, ber chromatic dispersion penalty
can be mitigated by optical or electrical compensation
methods. Self-phase modulation and intercarrier four-wave
mixing penalty can likewise be managed by phase con-
trol among carriers, or mitigated by coherent detection
and digital signal processing (e.g. nonlinear backpropa-
gation [47]). All of these anticipated developments will
add to critical enabling technologies for practical realiza-
tions of AO-OFDM for beyond-Tbps optical transmission
systems.
Acknowledgment. The authors are grateful to Professor
Gabriella Cincotti of University Roma TRE, Italy, for indepth guid-
ance and technical discussions.
Received: 30 June 2012, Revised: 8 December 2012,
Accepted: 10 December 2012
Published online: 15 February 2013
Key words: All-Optical OFDM (AO-OFDM), Optical Discrete
Fourier Transform (ODFT), Orthogonal Frequency Division Multi-
plexing (OFDM), Superchannel.
June-Koo K. Rhee is an associate pro-
fessor at the Korea Advanced Institute
of Science and Technology and a grad-
uate of Seoul National Univ. with a B.E.
(1988) and M.Sc. (1990), and the Univ.
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a Ph.D.
(1995), all in electrical engineering. Pre-
viously, he was with Princeton Univ.
(1995), NEC Res. Inst. (1996), Corning
Inc. (1998), and Samsung Adv. Inst. of Techno. (2003). His re-
search has made contributions in the areas of ROADM, DPSK
DWDM transmission, and WDM optical protection, green op-
tical networking, and optical and ow switching.
Neda Cvijetic received the Ph.D. de-
gree in electrical engineering from the
University of Virginia, Charlottesville,
VA, in 2008. Since 2008, she has
worked as a Research Staff Member in
the Broadband and Mobile Networking
Department at NEC Laboratories Amer-
ica, Princeton, NJ. She is also currently
a member of the adjunct faculty at the
Department of Electrical Engineering at
Columbia University. Her research interests include advanced
modulation, detection and digital signal processing (DSP)
for high-speed optical transmission, optical-wireless conver-
gence, and next-generation optical access networks.
www.lpr-journal.org C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim
LASER &PHOTONICS
REVIEWS
552 J.-K. K. Rhee et al.: Optical OFDM transmission using all-optical discrete Fourier transform
Naoya Wada received the B.E.,
M.E., and Dr. Eng. degrees in elec-
tronics from Hokkaido University,
Sapporo, Japan, in 1991, 1993,
and 1996, respectively. In 1996,
he joined the Communications Re-
search Lab, Japan. He is currently
the Research Manager of the Pho-
tonic Network Group, National Inst.
of Info. and Comm. Technology
(NICT), Japan. His research inter-
ests include photonic networks and
optical communications, such as OPS network, optical pro-
cessing, and OCDMA system.
Ting Wang received the M.S. degree
in electrical engineering from the City
University of New York, New York, and
the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineer-
ing from Nanjing University of Science
and Technology, Nanjing, China. Since
1991, he has been with NEC Laborato-
ries America, Princeton, NJ, where he
is currently the Department Head of op-
tical networking research.
References
[1] H. Masuda, E. Yamazaki, A. Sano, T. Yoshimatsu, T.
Kobayashi, E. Yoshida, Y. Miyamoto, S. Matsuoka, Y. Taka-
tori, M. Mizoguchi, K. Okada, K. Hagimoto, T. Yamada,
and S. Kamei, in: Tech. Digest of OFC/NFOEC 2009, paper
PDPB5, San Diego, March, 2009.
[2] K. Yonenaga, F. Inuzuka, S. Yamamoto, H. Takara, B. Koz-
icki, T. Yoshimatsu, A. Takada, and M. Jinno, in: Tech.
Digest of OFC/NFOEC 2009, paper OWM1, San Diego,
March, 2009.
[3] Y. Miyamoto, in: Proceedings of ECOC 2009, paper 10.3.3,
Vienna, Sept. 2009.
[4] X. Zhou, J. Yu, M.-F. Huang, Y. Shao, T. Wang, L. Nelson, P.
Magill, M. Birk, P. I. Borel, D. W. Peckham, and R. Lingle,
in: Tech. Digest of OFC/NFOEC 2010, PDPB9, San Diego,
March, 2010.
[5] A. Sano, H. Masuda, T. Kobayashi, M. Fujiwara, K.
Horikoshi, E. Yoshida, Y. Miyamoto, M. Matsui, M. Mi-
zoguchi, H. Yamazaki, Y. Sakamaki, and H. Ishii, in: Tech.
Digest of OFC/NFOEC 2010, Paper PDPB7, San Diego,
March, 2010.
[6] D. Hillerkuss, R. Schmogrow, T. Schellinger, M. Jordan, M.
Winter, G. Huber, T. Vallaitis, R. Bonk, P. Kleinow, F. Frey,
M. Roeger, S. Koenig, A. Ludwig, A. Marculescu, J. Li, M.
Hoh, M. Dreschmann, J. Meyer, S. Ben Ezra, N. Narkiss,
B. Nebendahl, F. Parmigiani, P. Petropoulos, B. Resan, A.
Oehler, K. Weingarten, T. Ellermeyer, J. Lutz, M. Moeller,
M. Huebner, J. Becker, C. Koos, W. Freude, and J. Leuthold,
Nature Photon. 5, 364371 (2011).
[7] T. Xia, G. Wellbrock, Y. Huang, E. Ip, M. Huang, Y. Shao,
T. Wang, Y. Aono, T. Tajima, S. Murakami, and N. Cvijetic,
in: Tech. Digest of OFC/NFOEC 2011, paper PDPA3, Los
Angeles, March, 2011.
[8] T. Xia, G. A. Wellbrock, Y. Huang, M. Huang, E. Ip, P. N.
Ji, D. Qian, A. Tanaka, Y. Shao, T. Wang, Y. Aono, and
T. Tajima, in: Tech. Digest of OFC/NFOEC 2012, paper
PDP5D.6, Los Angeles, March, 2012
[9] K. Ishihara, T. Kobayashi, R. Kudo, Y. Takatori, A. Sano,
E. Yamada, H. Masuda, M. Matsui, M. Mizoguchi, and Y.
Miyamoto, Electron. Lett. 44, 14801482, (2008).
[10] E. Ip and J. M. Kahn, J. Lightwave Technol. 28, 502519,
(2010).
[11] W. Shieh and C. Athaudage, Electron. Lett. 42, 587589
(2006)
[12] J. Armstrong and A. J. Lowery, Electron. Lett. 42, 370372
(2006).
[13] R. P. Giddings, X. Q. Jin, E. Hugues-Salas, E. Giacoumidis,
J. L. Wei, and J. M. Tang, Opt. Exp. 18, 55415555
(2010).
[14] Y. Ma, Q. Yang, Y. Tang, S. Chen, and W. Shieh, J. Lightwave
Technol. 28, 308315 (2010).
[15] C. R. S. Fludger, T. Duthel, D. van den Borne, C. Schulien,
E.-D. Schmidt, T. Wuth, J. Geyer, E. De Man, G.-D.
Khoe, and H. de Waardt, J. Lightwave Technol. 26, 6472
(2008).
[16] W. Shieh, H. Bao, and Y. Tang, Opt. Exp. 16, 841859
(2008).
[17] R. Schmogrow, M. Winter, D. Hillerkuss, B. Nebendahl, S.
Ben-Ezra, J. Meyer, M. Dreschmann, M. Huebner, J. Becker,
C. Koos, W. Freude, and J. Leuthold, Opt. Exp. 19, 12740
12749 (2011).
[18] H. Sanjoh, E. Yamada, and Y. Yoshikuni, in: Tech. Digest of
OFC 2002, paper ThD1, Anaheim, March 2002.
[19] A. Sano, H. Masuda, E. Yoshida, T. Kobayashi, E. Yamada,
Y. Miyamoto, F. Inuzuka, Y. Hibino, Y. Takatori, K. Hagi-
moto, T. Yamada, and Y. Sakamaki, in: Proceedings of ECOC
2007, post-deadline paper, Berlin, Sept. 2007.
[20] K. Lee, C. T. D. Chan, and J.-K. K. Rhee, Opt. Exp. 16,
40234028 (2008).
[21] K. Yonenaga, A. Sano, E. Yamazaki, F. Inuzuka, Y.
Miyamoto, A. Takada, and T. Yamada, in: Tech. Digest of
OFC/NFOEC2008, paper JThA48, San Diego, March 2008.
[22] S. Chandrasekhar, X. Liu, B. Zhu, and D. W. Peckham,
in: Proceedings of ECOC 2009, paper PD2.6, Vienna, Sept.
2009.
[23] Y.-K. Huang, E. Ip, Z. Wang, M.-F. Huang, Y. Shao, and T.
Wang, J. Lightwave Technol. 29, 38383844 (2011).
[24] Y.-K. Huang, M.-F. Huang, D. Qian, Y. Shao, E. Ip, T. Inoue,
Y. Inada, T. Ogata, Y. Aoki, and T. Wang, in: Proc. SPIE
8309, 83092A (2011).
[25] I. Kang, M. Rasras, X. Liu, S. Chandrasekhar, M. Cappuzzo,
L. T. Gomez, Y. F. Chen, L. Buhl, S. Cabot, and J. Jaques,
Opt. Exp. 19, 91119117 (2011).
[26] Z. Wang, K. S. Kravtsov, Y.-K. Huang, and P. R. Prucnal,
Opt. Exp. 19, 45014512 (2011).
[27] H. Chen, M. Chen, and S. Xie, J. Lightwave Technol. 27,
48484854 (2009).
[28] D. Hillerkuss, T. Schellinger, R. Schmogrow, M. Winter, T.
Vallaitis, R. Bonk, A. Marculescu, J. Li, M. Dreschmann,
J. Meyer, S. Ben Ezra, N. Narkiss, B. Nebendahl, F.
Parmigiani, P. Petropoulos, B. Resan, K. Weingarten, T.
C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.lpr-journal.org
REVIEW
ARTICLE
Laser Photonics Rev. 7, No. 4 (2013) 553
Ellermeyer, J. Lutz, M. M oller, M. Huebner, J. Becker,
C. Koos1, W. Freude, and J. Leuthold, in: Tech. Di-
gest of OFC/NFOEC 2010, paper PDPC1, San Diego,
March 2010.
[29] Y.-K. Huang, D. Qian, R. E. Saperstein, P. N. Ji, N. Cvijetic,
L. Xu, and T. Wang, in: Tech. Digest of OFC/NFOEC 2009,
paper OTuM4, San Diego, March 2009.
[30] H. Takahashi, A. A. Amin, S. L. Jansen, I. Morita, and H.
Tanaka, J. Lightwave Technol. 28, 406414 (2010).
[31] W. Li, X. Liang, W. Ma, T. Zhou, B. Huang, and D. Liu, Opt.
Fiber Technol. 16, 511 (2010).
[32] K. Takiguchi, T. Kitoh, A. Mori, M. Oguma, and H. Taka-
hashi, Opt. Lett. 36, 11401142 (2011).
[33] S. Shimizu, G. Cincotti, and N. Wada, in: Proceedings of
ECOC 2012, accepted, Amsterdam, Sept. 2012.
[34] A. J. Lowery, Opt. Exp. 18, 1412914143 (2010).
[35] A. D. Ellis and F. C. Garcia Gunning, IEEE Photon. Technol.
Lett. 17, 504506 (2005).
[36] J.-K. Rhee, F. Garcia, A. Ellis, B. Hallock, T. Kennedy, T.
Lackey, R. G. Lindquist, J. P. Kondis, B. A. Scott, J. M.
Harris, D. Wolf, and M. Dugan, in: Proceedings of ECOC
2001, paper Th.L.I.7, Amsterdam, Oct. 2001.
[37] G. Cincotti, J. Lightwave Technol. 22, 337342 (2004).
[38] G. Cincotti, J. Lightwave Technol. 22, 16421650 (2004).
[39] M. E. Marhic, Opt. Lett. 12, 6365 (1987).
[40] A. E. Siegman, Opt. Lett. 19, 12151217 (2001).
[41] K. Takiguchi, M. Oguma, T. Shibata, and H. Takahashi, Opt.
Lett. 34, 18281830 (2009).
[42] K. Takiguchi, M. Oguma, H. Takahashi, and A. Mori, in:
Tech. Digest of OFC/NFOEC 2010, paper OThB4, San
Diego, March 2010.
[43] G. Cincotti, Opt. Lett. 36, 23212323 (2011).
[44] S.-J. Lim and J.-K. K. Rhee, Opt. Exp. 19, 1359013597
(2011).
[45] G. Cincotti, J. Quantum Electron. 38, 14201427 (2002).
[46] D. Hillerkuss, M. Winter, M. Teschke, A. Marculescu, J.
Li, G. Sigurdsson, K. Worms, S. Ben Ezra, N. Narkiss, W.
Freude, and J. Leuthold, Opt. Exp. 18, 93249340 (2010).
[47] E. Ip and J. M. Kahn, J. Lightwave Technol. 26, 34163425
(2008).
www.lpr-journal.org C
2013 by WILEY-VCHVerlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim