Combination of optical and electronic logic gates for error correction in multipath differential demodulation

We present an optical multipath error correction technique for differentially encoded modulation formats such as differential-phase-shift-keying (DPSK) and differential polarization shift keying (DPolSK) for fiber-based and free-space communication. This multipath error correction method combines optical and electronic logic gates. The scheme can easily be implemented using commercially available interferometers and high speed logic gates and does not require any data overhead therefore does not affect the effective bandwidth of the transmitted data. It is not merely compatible but also complementary to error correction codes commonly used in optical transmission systems such as forward-error-correction (FEC). The technique consists of separating the demodulation at the receiver in multiple paths. Each path consists of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a different integer bit delay used in each path. Some basic logic operations follow and the three paths are compared using a simple majority vote algorithm. Experimental results show that the scheme improves receiver sensitivity by 1.5 dB at BER of 10(-3),in back-to-back configuration. Numerical results indicate a 1.6 dB improvement in the presence of Chromatic Dispersion for a 25% increase in tolerance for a 3dB penalty from +/-1220 ps/nm to +/-1520 ps/nm. and a 0.35 dB improvement for back-to-back operation.