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Updated: Jul 3, 2026

Quasi-light Storage for Optical Data Packets
Published on: February 6, 2014
Optical homodyne PSK demonstration of 1.5 photons per bit at 156 Mbps with rate-(1/2) turbo coding
M L Stevens1, D O Caplan, B S Robinson
1Optical Communication Technology Group, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, 244 Wood St, Lexington, MA 02420, USA. stevens@ll.mit.edu
Abstract:
We report the first demonstration of a near quantum-limited optical homodyne PSK receiver combined with powerful forward-error-correction coding, achieving 1.5 photons/bit sensitivity, within 4.5 dB of the Shannon limit. Phase-locking was achieved at 1.55 microm using an analog dither-based optical phase-locked loop with an external phase modulator. Analysis for this configuration with arbitrary loop damping is given showing a performance advantage for the overdamped case.
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