Capacity enhancement through entropy loading with probabilistically shaped signals in a frequency comb-based...

Area of Science:

• Optical Communications
• Information Theory

Background:

• Optical frequency combs offer a compact and energy-efficient alternative to traditional lasers in high-capacity wavelength division multiplexing systems.
• Power variations across comb lines in optical frequency comb systems cause performance disparities, necessitating mitigation strategies.
• Existing solutions like spectral flattening filters introduce additional system loss.

Purpose of the Study:

• To implement a multichannel entropy loading mechanism in an optical frequency comb-based coherent communication system.
• To dynamically allocate data rates based on individual channel performance.
• To mitigate performance discrepancies across channels and enhance overall system capacity.

Main Methods:

• Utilized probabilistic shaping to enable continuous adaptation of source entropy across multiple channels.
• Developed a multichannel entropy loading scheme to manage data rate allocation.
• Integrated this mechanism within an optical frequency comb coherent communication system.

Main Results:

• Effectively mitigated non-uniform performance across communication channels.
• Achieved a significant capacity enhancement of 34.91 Gbit/s.
• Demonstrated the viability of dynamic data rate allocation through entropy loading.

Conclusions:

• Multichannel entropy loading is an effective strategy for optimizing optical frequency comb communication systems.
• This approach overcomes the limitations of power variations in comb lines without introducing extra loss.
• The demonstrated technique offers a pathway to higher capacity and more efficient optical communication.