Multi-tone parallel coherent matched detection for demultiplexing of superchannels

This paper presents multi-tone parallel coherent matched detection that orthogonally detects superchannels without crosstalk between neighboring channels. The receiver consists of multiple sets of multi-tone coherent matched detector employed in parallel. In each detector, the received superchannels signal is homodyne mixed in multi frequency with locally generated multi-tone optical frequency comb; detected is a signal set that has the amplitude and phase exactly matched with the local comb. By launching orthogonal sets of local comb to the multiple parallel coherent matched detectors, the received superchannels are orthogonally downconverted to the baseband frequencies keeping the amplitude and phase information of all channels included. With an aid of n × n transform matrix, all channels are separately recovered from the downconverted signal sets. The system does not rely on any optical filters for channel demultiplexing and separation, with increased flexibility in wavelength arrangement. In addition, the parallel configuration equivalently enhance the bandwidth of the coherent matched detector keeping the speed in each tributary channel as high as possible. In this paper, it is experimentally demonstrated that even-odd interleaved 23 × 20-Gb/s QPSK superchannels are orthogonally demultiplexed and detected by two-tone coherent matched detection.