Experimental Investigation of a Recurrent Optical Spectrum Slicing Receiver for Intensity Modulation/Direct Detection systems using Programmable Photonics

TL;DR

This study experimentally validates a recurrent optical spectrum slicing receiver that uses programmable photonics to improve dispersion compensation in high-speed IM/DD optical links, enabling longer transmission distances.

Contribution

It demonstrates the practical implementation and effectiveness of recurrent optical spectrum slicing accelerators using programmable photonic platforms for dispersion mitigation.

Findings

Successfully equalized 80 km of 64 Gb/s PAM-4 transmission

Validated recurrent filters in programmable photonics for dispersion compensation

Enhanced transmission distance in dispersive channels

Abstract

In this paper, we experimentally validate our previous numerical works in recurrent optical spectrum slicing (ROSS) accelerators for dispersion compensation in high-speed IM/DD links. For this, we utilize recurrent filters implemented both through a waveshaper and by exploiting novel integrated programmable photonic platforms. Different recurrent configurations are tested. The ROSS accelerators exploit frequency processing through recurrent optical filter nodes in order to mitigate the power fading effect, which hinders the transmission distance and baudrate scalability of IM/DD systems. By equalizing even 80 km of 64 Gb/s PAM-4 transmission in C-band, we prove that our system can offer an appealing solution in highly dispersive channels.