Mitigating weak dispersion in affordable RF-over-fiber channels

Area of Science:

• Optical Engineering
• Telecommunications
• Signal Processing

Background:

• High-frequency optical channels are susceptible to dispersion, which degrades data encoding and signal integrity.
• Existing dispersion-compensating filters may not be cost-effective or reliable for next-generation low-cost analog and digital optical links.
• Weak dispersion in channels, such as those used for radar detection, necessitates specialized compensation methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and evaluate a novel dispersion-compensating filter tailored for low-cost analog and digital optical links.
• To analyze the fundamental performance limits of optical channels with and without the proposed filter.
• To quantify the performance improvements offered by the dispersion-compensating filter in various channel conditions.

Main Methods:

• Design of a dispersion-compensating filter leveraging analog channel properties: weak modulation depth, spectrally bounded signal, and low-dispersion characteristics.
• Analytical calculation of fundamental performance limits for optical channels, both with and without the filter.
• Numerical simulations to estimate filter performance for pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) digital channels and analog channels.

Main Results:

• The developed dispersion-compensating filter demonstrates significant performance improvements in both analog and digital optical channels.
• Numerical simulations confirm analytical derivations, showing considerable enhancement in channel performance after filter integration.
• The filter effectively mitigates the detrimental effects of weak dispersion in high-frequency optical communication systems.

Conclusions:

• The proposed dispersion-compensating filter is a viable and effective solution for enhancing the reliability of low-cost analog and digital optical links.
• The filter's design, based on specific analog channel properties, offers a cost-effective approach to dispersion compensation.
• Integration of this filter leads to considerable improvements in channel performance, making it suitable for next-generation optical communication systems.