Geracao - Formatos.Modulacao 02 04

Generation and Detection of Optical Modulation Formats
Christophe Peucheret
DTU Fotonik
Department of Photonics Engineering
Technical University of Denmark
cpeu@fotonik.dtu.dk
26/03/2012
Abstract
This note is intended as a complement to the lectures in 34150 Optical Communi-
cation Systems on advanced lightwave modulation and transmission systems. After re-
viewing some basic concepts on modulation, it rst presents a simple description of the
Mach-Zehnder modulator used as an intensity or a phase modulator. The concept of dier-
ential binary phase-shift keying (DPSK) modulation with interferometric detection is then
introduced. How Mach-Zehnder modulators can be integrated into a more general modula-
tor structure allowing the synthesis of arbitrary modulation formats is presented next. The
generation of dierential quadrature phase-shift keying (DQPSK) and quadrature-amplitude
modulation (QAM) are taken as examples. The principle of DQPSK modulation used in
conjunction with interferometric detection is then briey outlined. Finally, some hints on
how more advanced modulation formats can be detected in a phase diversity receiver are
provided.
Contents
1 Modulation concepts 2
1.1 Modulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Constellation diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 The Mach-Zehnder modulator 5
2.1 Principle of operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 General MZM model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3 Frequency chirping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.4 Phase modulation using a Mach-Zehnder modulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.5 Pulse carving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3 Dierential phase-shift keying 17
3.1 Introduction to phase modulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.2 Coherent detection of PSK signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.3 Self-homodyne DPSK detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.4 Interferometric demodulation of DPSK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1
34150 Optical Communication Systems
4 The optical quadrature modulator 26
4.1 Motivations for optical multilevel modulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.2 Principle of the optical IQ modulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.3 QPSK signal generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.4 Square QAM signal generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
5 Dierential quadrature phase-shift keying 30
5.1 Signal generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
5.2 Interferometric detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
6 Phase diversity receiver 34
Appendix A List of acronyms 37
1 Modulation concepts
1.1 Modulation
In the context of optical communication, modulation consists in imprinting some information,
generally available under the form of an electrical signal, on an optical carrier. This can be
achieved by modifying one of the physical attributes of the electric eld associated with the
optical wave
E(t) = Re
_
_
P (t)e
j(t)
e
j
0
t
e (t)
_
. (1)
The quantities that can be modulated according to the information to be transmitted are the
power P (t), the phase (t), the carrier frequency
0
, or the state of polarisation e (t).
It has been implicitly assumed when writing (1) that the frequency content of the signal is
restricted to a limited bandwidth around its angular carrier frequency
0
. In other terms, it
means that the modulation speed (i.e. the rate at which the modulated quantity is made to
vary) is much lower than the reciprocal of the carrier frequency T
0
= 2/
0
.
Neglecting the vectorial nature of light (i.e. its polarisation), the arbitrary electric eld of
(1) can be written
1
E (t) = Re
_
E (t) e
j
0
t
_
, (2)
where
E (t) =
_
P (t) e
j(t)
, (3)
is known as the complex envelope of the signal. Note that this denition corresponds to that of
a bandpass signal met in the classical theory of signals and systems.
The modulating signal can be of digital or analogue form. This course is mostly concerned
with digital modulation, in which case the complex envelope of a modulated optical wave can
be expressed as
E (t) =
_
P
0
k
a
k
p (t kT
s
) , (4)
1
It is important to note that the phase conventions used here are not universal and opposite signs may be
found in the fast varying term oscillating at the carrier frequency and/or the phase term. The choice of those signs
in the representation of real quantities by complex numbers is arbitrary. However the sign of physical quantities
should be right. Dierent research communities and dierent individuals tend to favor dierent conventions. This
is especially the case here, where the elds of electromagnetism and digital communications converge. Therefore
the reader should be prepared to meet dierent conventions and should remain alert to ensure they are used
consistently.
2
where P
0
is the signal peak power, p (t) is a pulse shape function whose amplitude is, without
loss of generality, constrained to [0, 1], and a
k
is the digital data sequence to be transmitted
2
.
T
s
corresponds to the inverse of the rate at which pulses are transmitted, a quantity known as
the symbol rate S. a
k
takes values in a limited set of complex numbers, which simply expresses
the digital nature of the signal.
If furthermore the digital modulation is binary, the digital sequence can take one of two
values {a
1
, a
2
} and T
s
= T
b
, where the bit period T
b
is the inverse of the bit rate T
b
= 1/B. For
instance, in the case of on-o keying (OOK) modulation the digital sequence can take values
within {0, 1} while in the case of binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) modulation the values will
be constrained to
_
0, e
j
_
.
In the more general case of mary modulation, a
k
can take values in a set of m modulation
states {a
1
, , a
m
}. In this case, each transmitted symbol carries log
2
m bits and the symbol
rate and the bit rate are related according to
S =
B
log
2
m
. (5)
The bit rate B is expressed in units of bits per second (bit/s) while the symbol rate S is expressed
in bauds or symbols per second. As an example, quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) is a
quaternary (two bits per symbol) modulation format where the signal can take four phase
values, hence the a
k
are taken within
_
1, e
j/2
, e
j
, e
j3/2
_
. In this case, the symbol rate is
half of the bit rate.
Since E (t) is a complex quantity, it can also be expressed in term of its real and imaginary
parts
E (t) = Re {E (t)} + jIm{E (t)} . (6)
Re {E (t)} and Im{E (t)} are referred as the in-phase and quadrature components of the signal,
respectively.
In order to guarantee the compatibility of the phase convention introduced in (1) with
the denition of the argument of a complex number, z = x + jy = |r| e
j
, and its natural
representation in the complex plane (usual conventions met in digital communications), the
I and Q component of the signals will be dened in what follows as I (t) = Re {E (t)} and
Q(t) = Im{E (t)}, leading to
E (t) = I (t) jQ(t) . (7)
With this convention, a positive phase shift will be represented in the (I, Q) space as as a
counter-clockwise rotation, in agreement with the usual conventions met in digital communica-
tions.
1.2 Constellation diagrams
In a digital optical communication system, one would like the eld to take well dened values,
dened hereafter as modulation states depending on the data to be transmitted. These modu-
lation states can be simply represented on a constellation diagram, which is a representation in
the complex plane (I, Q) of the allowed values of the complex envelope E (t
k
) at the sampling
instant t
k
(i.e. when a decision on the symbol is made. With such a representation, the constel-
lation diagram of a mary modulation format will consist of m dots in the (I, Q) space when
the modulation is ideal. During transitions between modulation states, the complex envelope of
the electric eld can take values outside this discrete set, corresponding to trajectories linking
2
One may generalise the concept by considering that one waveform s
k
(t) is associated with each modulation
state. However a description according to (4) is sucient for all the modulation formats considered in this note.
3
OOK (unchirped) PSK (chirped) PSK (unchirped) OOK (chirped)
QPSK (PM+PM) QPSK (MZM+PM) QPSK (IQ)
Figure 1 Illustration of constellation diagrams for some typical optical modulation formats. The red
dots indicate the modulation states, while the blue lines show the trajectory of the electric eld during
transitions between these modulation states.
the modulation states on the constellation diagram. These trajectories are seldom represented
in constellation diagrams. However they are important in practice since they provide informa-
tion on the deviations of the electric eld between the modulation states, hence on frequency
chirping, signal peak power and average power, etc. In this sense, once could interpret constel-
lation diagram with trajectories as a generalization of the well known concept of eye diagram
used for one dimensional modulation.
As an illustration, several constellation diagrams assuming ideal modulation conditions are
represented in Fig. 1. The red dots indicate the allowed modulation states, while the blue lines
show the trajectory of the complex envelope of the electric eld during transitions between the
modulation states. For instance, in the case of ideal OOK modulation, the modulation states
correspond to the two (normalised) power levels 0 and 1, represented as a dot at the centre
point as well as on the unit circle in the (I, Q) space. It will be seen later that, unless special
precautions are taken, the signal resulting from OOK modulation may be chirped. This means
that the instantaneous frequency of the signal, dened with the phase conventions of (1) as
(t) =
0

(t)
t
(8)
is changing when the signal is modulated, or equivalently that its phase is a time varying
function. In the constellation diagrams, transitions at constant phase will therefore correspond
to unchirped signals, while phase-varying transitions are the ngerprints of chirped signals. In
the case of BPSK modulation, the modulation states appear as dots on the unit circle separated
by a phase dierence of . Here again, some distinction can be made between chirped and
unchirped modulation. The generation of unchirped signals will be discussed in Sec. 2.3 for
OOK and in Sec. 2.4 for BPSK.
Finally, several constellation diagrams corresponding to dierent methods of generation of
optical QPSK are also represented in Fig. 1. It can be seen that all methods result in the
generation of the wished modulation states, represented as dots on the unit circle with relative
phase osets of /2. However, the transitions are fairly dierent for the three methods. For a
given generation method, some transitions may be chirped while others are not. Furthermore
some methods achieve transitions at constant power (i.e. the corresponding trajectory follows
the unit circle) while others result in variations of the intensity while the phase is modulated.
The generation of QPSK signals will be described in more details in Sec. 4.
4
Those examples illustrate how useful constellation diagrams can be to understand the exact
nature of the modulation process. In real cases, the modulation states will no longer appear
as a single dot in the constellation diagram due to noise and signal distortion resulting from
e.g. bandwidth limitations. Furthermore, the transitions may also depart from the ideal curves
due to imperfections in the modulation process, adding even more practical value to measured
constellation diagrams.
2 The Mach-Zehnder modulator
In this section the operation of the most common and versatile external optical modulator used
in most of high-speed optical communication systems will be described in details. After outlining
its principle of operation and briey describing its implementation in electro-optic crystals, a
detailled and fairly universal model of a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) will be presented.
Using this model it will be shown that both chirped and unchirped intensity modulation can be
achieved using an MZM. Its use as a phase modulator will then be described. Finally, methods
to generate optical return-to-zero (RZ) signals from non return-to-zero (NRZ) electronics using
cascaded MZM modulators will be presented.
2.1 Principle of operation
The refractive index of some materials can be modied by applying an external electric eld
to them through the linear electro-optic eect, also known as Pockels eect.
3
The important
features of this eect is that the refractive index change is proportional to the applied volt-
age and that for most practical purposes the eect can be described as instantaneous. By
instantaneous, it is meant that its time scale is of the order of a few femtoseconds (1 fs =
1.010
15
s), which is much faster than the time scales associated with the modulation, typ-
ically of the order of 10-100 ps (1 ps = 1.010
12
s) for modulation speeds in the range of
10-100 Gbit/s. A straightforward application is the realisation of phase modulators made from
an electro-optic waveguide subjected to a time dependent electric eld. The applied voltage
modulates the refractive index of the waveguide material, hence the phase shift experienced by
a light wave propagating along the waveguide. However, legacy optical communication systems
typically rely on intensity modulation of the light wave. This can be achieved by transforming
the phase modulation induced by the electro-optic eect into intensity modulation using an
interferometric structure.
In order to illustrate the operation principle of such a device, the simple interferometric
structure represented in Fig. 2 is considered. It is based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer
including one electro-optic material in one of the arms. When used as a data modulator, such
a structure is generally integrated by diusing some waveguides in the electro-optic material
and depositing the electrodes on top or around the waveguides. Assuming the power is split
or combined equally in the input and output couplers of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, the
power at the output of the interferometer depends on the dierence between the phase shifts
experienced by the light propagating in the upper and lower arm of the structure, (t) and
0
,
respectively, according to
P
out
= P
in
cos
2

2
, (9)
where = (t)
0
.
3
This eect and how it can be applied to high-speed light modulation are discussed in details in the course
34153 From Photonics to Optical Communications.
5
0 1 2 3 4
0.0
0.5
1.0
Figure 2 Principle of operation of a Mach-Zehnder modulator. a) Mach-Zehnder interferometer con-
guration where the refractive index in one of the arms is modied by an applied voltage through the
linear electro-optic eect. b) Transfer function of the modulator and typical operating condition for non
return-to-zero modulation.
The phase shift induced in the upper arm of the interferometer depends on its refractive
index, which itself depends on the applied external electric eld through the electro-optic eect.
If a time-dependent voltage V (t) is applied across the upper waveguide of the modulator, its
refractive index will become time dependent and, in turn, the transmission P
out
/P
in
of the Mach-
Zehnder interferometer will also depend on time. If a continuous optical wave is applied to the
input of the modulator, the output power will thus be modulated according to the electrical
data V (t). The value of the phase shift created by an applied external voltage depends upon
many parameters, including the choice of the electro-optic material, the orientation of the
external electric eld with respect to the principal axes of the crystal, the polarisation of the
incoming lightwave, as well as the geometry and dimensions of the waveguide. Lithium-niobate
(LiNbO
3
) is customarily used as a suitable electro-optic material for high-speed modulation in
optical communication systems, owing to its relatively large electro-optic coecient and well
controlled waveguide fabrication processes. In any case it is possible to make abstraction of the
actual physical implementation of the modulator and describe the ability of the material and
chosen conguration to respond to an applied voltage by introducing a quantity known as the
half-wave voltage V
. Applying a voltage of V
to the electrode of an electro-optic waveguide

will result in a voltage-induced phase shift of . The electro-optically induced phase shift (t)
can therefore be related to the applied voltage V (t) according to
(t) =
V (t)
V
. (10)
Through (9) and (10), it is then possible to calculate the transmission of the modulator as a
function of the applied voltage. Such a transfer function
4
, where the applied voltage has been
normalised to the half-wave voltage, is also represented in Fig. 2. The operation conditions of
electro-optic Mach-Zehnder modulators are detailed further in Sec. 2.2. In particular it will be
4
This term is often used to describe the power transmission as a function of applied voltage of an intensity
modulator. It is however improper as it does not correspond to the usual notion of transfer functions used in the
theory of linear systems.
6
Figure 3 Typical layout of a LiNbO
3
dual-electrode intensity modulator (Source: Sumitomo Osaka
Cement Co., Ltd).
shown that, in contrast with this simple description, applying an electrical signal to both arms
of the Mach-Zehnder modulator will be required in order to generate an unchirped signal.
Fig. 3 shows the layout of a dual-drive MZM where dierent modulating signals can be
applied to the two arms of the Mach-Zehnder structure. As previously mentioned, a LiNbO
3
crystal is used as a substrate where the Mach-Zehnder interferometer structure is patterned by
diusing titanium to locally raise the refractive index and form waveguides. Gold travelling wave
electrodes are then deposited to apply the modulation. Even though the physical eect leading
to the refractive index change is nearly instantaneous, some bandwidth limitations nevertheless
exist in such device. This is due to the fact that the refractive index change induced by the
applied electric eld is quite small. Consequently, a long interaction length between the optical
wave and the electrical radio frequency (RF) driving signal is required in order to create the
required phase shift for switching the modulator between its desired output states. However,
since the optical wave is travelling at the light velocity in the medium, ecient interaction
can only be achieved at high frequencies if travelling wave electrodes are used for the driving
signal. Since the dielectric permittivity of the crystal is dierent at optical and microwave
frequencies, the velocities of the optical and RF signals are dierent, which result in bandwidth
limitations
5
. Consequently a considerable engineering eort is continuously devoted to solutions
able to provide velocity matching between the optical and RF waves in order to enlarge the
bandwidth of electro-optic modulators and meet the requirements induced by ever increasing
bit rates.
The typical length of electro-optic waveguides in LiNbO
3
modulators used for telecommu-
nication application is of the order of a few centimeters (e.g. 4 cm), making such devices
relatively bulky when tting on a transponder card together with the RF driver ampliers and
control electronics. Typical switching voltages are of the order of V
6 V, even though signif-

icant eort has been dedicated to decreasing this number over the years. It should be pointed
out that obtaining a digital binary signal peak-to-peak voltage of this order of magnitude is
far from being trivial when operating at bit rates of 40 Gbit/s and above, requiring expensive
broadband driving ampliers.
5
These points, as well as the beautiful physics of the electro-optic eect are described in much detail in 34153
From Photonics to Optical Communications.
7
Figure 4 General structure of a Mach-Zehnder modulator with power splitting and combining ratios
equal to and , respectively, and driven with voltages V
1
(t) and V
2
(t) applied to the upper and lower
arm, respectively.
2.2 General Mach-Zehnder modulator model
The structure of a Mach-Zehnder modulator is depicted schematically in Fig. 4. It consists of
an input waveguide followed by a Y-junction that splits the optical signal between two arms
where the optical eld experiences phase shifts equal to
1
and
2
, respectively. In the most
general case, it is assumed that
1
and
2
, which depend on the voltages applied to the upper
and lower arm, V
1
and V
2
, respectively, can be created independently. The elds propagating
in each of the arms are then combined in an output waveguide via another Y-junction. It is
also assumed that the power splitting ratios of the input and output Y-junctions are and ,
respectively. Furthermore, the loss experienced by the optical eld in the upper and lower arm
of the structure, including excess loss in the input and output Y-junctions, is described by
1
and
2
, respectively.
The eld at the output of the modulator is the sum of the contributions propagating through
the upper and lower paths. Therefore, its complex envelope can be expressed as
E
out
(t) =
_
_
e
j
1
+
2
1
_
1 e
j
2
_
E
in
(t) . (11)
Introducing the notations,
a =
1
_
, (12)
b =
2
1
_
1 , (13)
the output eld becomes
E
out
(t) = e
j
_
a e
j
2
+ b e
j
2
_
E
in
(t) , (14)
where
=
1

2
, (15)
=

1
+
2
2
. (16)
It is possible to nd a general expression for the eld at the output of the modulator by
expanding (14) into real and imaginary parts
E
out
(t) = e
j
_
(a + b) cos

2
+ j (b a) sin

2
_
E
in
(t) , (17)
8
leading to
E
out
(t) = E
in
(t) e
j(
+)
_
(a + b)
2
cos
2

2
+ (a b)
2
sin
2

2
, (18)
where the phase term depends on the power imbalance between the upper and lower arms
of the interferometer, as well as on the phase dierence experienced by the light propagating
through the upper and lower waveguides, according to
tan =
_
a b
a + b
_
tan

2
. (19)
The phase shifts in the upper and lower arms of the structure,
1
and
2
, can be expressed as
a function of the applied voltages V
1
and V
2
, respectively, as well as the half-wave voltage V
,
which is assumed to be equal in both arms.
1
(t) =
V
1
(t)
V
, (20)
2
(t) =
V
2
(t)
V
. (21)
The voltage applied to each arm of the interferometer can be written as the sum of a d.c. and
an a.c. term
V
1
(t) = V
dc,1
+ V
pp,1
d
1
(t) , (22)
V
2
(t) = V
dc,2
+ V
pp,2
d
2
(t) , (23)
where V
pp,i
is the peak-to-peak voltage of the signal applied to the arm i, and d
i
(t) is its nor-
malised waveform such that d
i
(t)
_
1
2
,
1
2
.
It is now assumed that the power splitting and combining ratios at the input and output
Y-junctions are = =
1
2
and the excess loss experienced in the upper and lower paths of the
interferometer are equal (
1
=
2
= , resulting in a = b =

2
). Re-writing (18) leads to
E
out
(t) =
_
P
out
(t) e
j(t)
, (24)
where
P
out
(t) = P
in
(t)
2
cos
2
_

2V
{V
dc,1
V
dc,2
+ V
pp,1
d
1
(t) V
pp,2
d
2
(t)}
_
, (25)
and
(t) =

2V
{V
dc,1
+ V
dc,2
+ V
pp,1
d
1
(t) + V
pp,2
d
2
(t)} . (26)
The power at the output of the Mach-Zehnder modulator therefore depends on the dierence
between the d.c. voltages applied to each of the arms, V
bias
= V
dc,1
V
dc,2
, known as modulator
bias, as well as on the dierence between the driving signals V
pp,1
d
1
(t) V
pp,2
d
2
(t). This
opens up many possibilities for the use of the Mach-Zehnder modulator in optical communication
systems, a number of which will be described in the following sections. The simple case where
one wants to achieve the commonly used intensity modulation of continuous wave light according
to an electrical modulating signal d (t) is described rst.
Fig. 5 represents the transmission of the modulator P
out
/P
in
as a function of the dierence
between the voltages applied to each of the two arms V = V
1
V
2
. For simplicity, it has
been assumed that the insertion loss of the modulator can be neglected so that
2
= 1. The
transfer function is obviously periodic with a period 2V
. When restricted to a portion limited

9
Figure 5 Illustration of the biasing points and driving voltage for intensity modulation using a Mach-
Zehnder modulator.
by a minimum and the nearest maximum, therefore corresponding to monotonous variations of
the function P
out
/P
in
, the transfer function of the device can be exploited to perform intensity
modulation of a continuous wave input according to an electrical data stream d (t). In particular,
OOK modulation can be be achieved when driving the modulator between a minimum and the
nearest maximum in its transfer function, as shown in Fig. 5. Ideally, one would like the
extinction ratio of the modulator, dened as
ER =
P
max
P
min
, (27)
where P
max
and P
min
are the maximum and minimum transmitted power, respectively, to
be as large as possible. Obtaining an innite extinction ratio would require total destructive
interference at the output of the Mach-Zehnder structure, which can only happen if the splitting
and propagation loss are perfectly balanced in the two propagation paths, as can be checked
from (18). Such a total destructive interference cannot be achieved in practice, and the static
extinction ratio of MZMs is of the order of 10-15 dB, which is sucient in practice.
Furthermore, if operated between a minimum and it nearest maximum transmission, the
non-linear nature of the Mach-Zehnder transfer function will result in eventual residual voltage
ripples of the driving signal to be signicantly attenuated in the generated optical signal. The
non-linear transfer function of the modulator therefore provides a mean to prevent electrical sig-
nal imperfections from being transferred to the optical domain in case binary OOK modulation
is performed.
2.3 Frequency chirping
Single-arm drive
The most straightforward implementation of the Mach-Zehnder modulator consists in applying
a modulating signal d (t) to only a single arm of the interferometer. The power at the output
10
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6
-10
-5
0
5
10

f
r
e
q
u
e
n
c
y

c
h
i
r
p

(
G
H
z
)
time (ns)
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0

p
o
w
e
r

(
m
W
)
Figure 6 Illustration of the frequency chirp generated at the output of a single-drive Mach-Zehnder
modulator. The power and chirp at the output of the modulator have been calculated numerically for a
10 Gbit/s NRZ signal.
of the device can be directly expressed from (25) with d
1
(t) = d (t) and d
2
(t) = 0, immediately
leading to
P
out
= P
in

2
cos
2
_

2V
{V
bias
+ V
pp,1
d (t)}
_
. (28)
In this case, the ideal operating conditions to generate an intensity modulated signal with large
extinction ratio and maximum peak power require the modulating signal to have a peak-to-peak
voltage equal to V
pp,1
= V
.
Eq. (26) also shows that, the phase shift induced by the modulator is time dependent. If
the constant phase shift, equivalent to a propagation delay, is neglected, the time varying phase
shift induced by the modulator can be written
(t) =

2V
V
pp,1
d (t) . (29)
Consequently, the generation of an intensity modulated signal using a single arm drive Mach-
Zehnder modulator is always accompanied with phase modulation. This is equivalent to a
change of the instantaneous frequency of the signal according to (8), hence to frequency chirping.
As an illustration, the frequency chirp at the output of a Mach-Zehnder modulator driven from
a single arm with a 10 Gbit/s non return-to-zero (NRZ) signal has been calculated and is
represented in Fig. 6 together with the emitted waveform. It can be seen that, with realistic
values of the modulator parameters, frequency deviations of the order of 10 GHz are induced
on the signal.
Even though well controlled frequency chirp can be benecial for transmission, frequency
chirping that follows the variations of the intensity modulated signal is likely to result in trans-
mission impairments and is therefore an undesirable feature of the modulated signal. Such
frequency chirping is a well-known detrimental eect that restricts the use of directly modu-
lated lasers (DMLs) at high bit rates to short transmission distances. In the context of DMLs,
the instantaneous frequency change (t) can be expressed as a function of the emitted power
11
P (t) according to
(t) =

4
_
d
dt
[ln P (t)] + P (t)
_
, (30)
where is known as the linewidth enhancement factor and is the adiabatic chirp coecient.
The rst term in (30), known as transient chirp, only exists when the emitted power varies with
time, for instance during transients of the applied electrical signal, while the second term, named
adiabatic chirp, is responsible for the dierent emission frequencies observed at the output of
DMLs under steady state when a 1 or a 0 is transmitted. In case the chirp behaviour is
dominated by transient eects, the frequency deviation can be expressed as
(t) =

4
_
1
P (t)
dP (t)
dt
_
, (31)
hence, since the instantaneous frequency change is related to the phase of the complex envelope
of the signal according to (8),
=
d
dt
1
2P
dP
dt
. (32)
In analogy with directly modulated lasers, it is possible to dene a chirp parameter
MZ
accord-
ing to (32) for Mach-Zehnder modulators. In the case of a single drive modulator, substituting
(28) and (29) into (??) immediately leads to
MZ
= cot
_

2V
{V
bias
+ V
pp,1
d (t)}
_
. (33)
It is generally considered that frequency chirping is to be avoided in optical transmitters for
long distance transmission, since it broadens the spectrum, which in turn reduces the dispersion
tolerance of the signal and limits the spectral eciency. Consequently, chirp-free operation is
a desired feature of any modulation process. Interestingly, this can also be achieved in MZMs
provided the driving conditions are modied, as detailled in the following section.
Chirp-free operation
In the most general case when two distinct driving signals d
1
(t) and d
2
(t) are applied to the
two arms of the modulator, (25) and (26) apply. It can especially be seen from (26) that, for
chirp-free operation, the phase of the signal at the output of the modulator should become
time-independent, which can be achieved provided the condition
V
pp,1
d
1
(t) + V
pp,2
d
2
(t) = 0 (34)
is satised. If furthermore the two signals that are applied to each of the arms of the modulator
have the same peak-to-peak voltage,V
pp,1
= V
pp,2
= V
pp
, this condition translates into
d
1
(t) = d
2
(t) . (35)
This condition is general for chirp-free operation of the modulator, whether the signals to be
modulated are analogue or digital. In the case of digital binary modulation, the digital signal to
be transmitted d (t) should be applied to one of the arms of the modulator, while the inverted
signal, also known as complementary signal, should be applied to the second arm. In the case
of modulation by a sinusoidal signal, the two driving voltages should be phase shifted by 180
before being applied to the two arms of the modulator. Such driving conditions are usually
described as push-pull operation of a dual-drive MZM.
12
hot electrode waveguide
LiNbO
3
crystal
E
a
field
x-cut
ground electrode
waveguide
ground electrode
buffer layer
Figure 7 Cross section of an x-cut LiNbO
3
Mach-Zehnder modulator structure. The light is prop-
agating in the y direction. The electrical data is applied to the hot electrode, resulting in opposite
orientations of the applied electric eld vectors over the two waveguides, hence electro-optically induced
phase shifts of opposite signs.
If binary intensity modulation is performed, the extinction ratio and modulator output
power are simultaneously optimised provided the peak-to-peak voltage of each of the modulating
signals is equal to V
pp,1
= V
pp,2
=
V
2
. Since it is usually dicult and expensive to obtain
large peak-to-peak voltages at high bit rates, push-pull operation of the Mach-Zehnder relaxes
the requirement in term of signal amplication compared to the single arm drive case discussed
earlier. However, in practice, two driver ampliers are needed instead of one, even though their
required output voltage is only half the value in the single drive case. Furthermore, chirp free
operation requires (34) to be satised, which imposes strict conditions on the voltage imbalance
and delay that can be tolerated between the signals driving each of the arms of the modulator.
Consequently, push-pull operation results in an increased complexity at the transmitter.
This complexity can however be alleviated by the use of properly designed MZMs, which
even though they require only one single driving signal, eectively operate in push-pull operation
by inducing refractive index changes of opposite signs in the two arms of the Mach-Zehnder
structure. The cross section of such an x-cut MZM is represented in Fig. 7. The opposite
orientations of the external electric eld applied across the two waveguides ensure opposite
phase shifts for this particular LiNbO
3
crystal orientation. Such a structure does not require
careful alignment and balancing of two inverted driving signals, at the cost of a higher switching
voltage.
All the applications discussed later on in this note will by default make use of chirp-free
MZMs and the phase varying term will therefore be ignored.
2.4 Phase modulation using a Mach-Zehnder modulator
It has been reminded in the introduction to this section that performing phase modulation
in an electro-optic crystal is straightforward since the phase shift induced by the crystal is
proportional to the refractive index change, hence is linearly dependent on the applied voltage.
The input-output relation of such a phase modulator can therefore be simply expressed as
E
out
(t) = E
in
e
j

V
V (t)
, (36)
and all amounts of phase modulation can be achieved, depending on the available voltage V (t).
This inherent simplicity is however not without practical diculties. Achieving a specied
amount of phase modulation is not straightforward, especially for digital signals, since
the phase modulation is not easily visible, unlike intensity modulation that can be easily
monitored on an oscilloscope following detection in a photodiode.
13
Figure 8 Phase modulation using an electro-optic phase modulator. Due to the linear dependence
of the electro-optically induced phase shift on the applied voltage, uctuations of the driving signal are
transferred to the optical phase.
Furthermore, since the phase-versus-voltage transfer of the phase modulator is linear, any
uctuation present on the driving electrical signal will be transferred to the phase. This point
is illustrated in Fig. 8 in the case of BPSK phase modulation. In the ideal case where the
driving signal has a well dened peak-to-peak voltage of V
and the nominal voltage levels are

reached for each bit, the desired phase modulation is obtained, as illustrated by the blue traces
and blue dots in the constellation diagram. If now some voltage uctuations exist from bit to
bit, as shown in the red waveforms, some phase deviation is present in the optical signal.
This manifests itself on the constellation diagram as an azimuthal spreading of the modulation
states at xed radius, which is equivalent to phase noise. One can also note that, when a phase
modulator is employed, the linear phase-versus-voltage transfer results in the optical signal
being chirped, as can be seen in the trajectory on the constellation diagram that follows the
unit circle.
Interestingly, unchirped BPSK modulation with exact phase shifts can be achieved using
an MZM. This may look as an unnecessary complication in the rst place since an MZM
is essentially made from two phase modulators in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer structure.
However the benet of exact phase shifts and of unchirped modulation make the use of MZM
the method of choice for BPSK modulation. The principle is illustrated in Fig. 9 where not
only the usual power transfer function, but also the corresponding eld transfer E
out
/E
in
are
represented. It can be seen that, whenever the power transfer of the modulator reaches a
minimum, the eld transfer changes sign, which is equivalent to a phase shift (e
j
= 1).
Therefore, driving the MZM between two consecutive maxima results in the introduction of an
exact phase shift each time the operating point crosses the transmission minimum. This is
the principle of BPSK modulation using an MZM.
If the MZM is operated in push-pull mode, the modulation is chirp-free. A drawback of
the method is that some intensity modulation is introduced simultaneously with the desired
phase modulation. An intensity dip is created in the modulated optical signal each time the
phase is ipped between 0 and . Those eects can be clearly observed in the constellation
diagram where the transitions between the 0 and phase states follow a straight line that crosses
the origin. The benets of chirp-free exact modulation typically outweighs the drawbacks.
Furthermore, in case RZ modulation is used, which is often the case for this type of modulation
14
1 3 2
power / field
Figure 9 Principle of binary phase modulation using a Mach-Zehnder modulator.
format, some pulses will be modulated on top of the phase modulated data, eectively resulting
in a suppression of those intensity transitions accompanying the phase shifts. From a practical
perspective, using an MZM to realise binary phase modulation requires a peak-to-peak voltage
dierence of 2V
, which is twice as large as when a phase modulator is used. Furthermore, this

method only allows ro reach phase shifts while the use of a phase modulator is more versatile
since it allows any phase shift to be generated by a proper choice of the driving voltage, however
with the inherent diculty of adjusting the driving voltage, as discussed previously.
2.5 Pulse carving
Until now, the focus has been on the generation of NRZ modulation formats, where the intensity
of the light remains at its high level when consecutive 1 bits are transmitted. This legacy
coding has been employed to a large extent due to bandwidth limitations in electronic circuits
and electro-optic components. Indeed, conventional electronic circuits are designed to operate
with NRZ signals since RZ-compatible components would require a signicant larger bandwidth.
However, in the optical domain, the bandwidth usage has become a major preoccupation
only very recently. On the other hand, the peculiarities of the optical bre channel, and in
particular optical bre nonlinearities, have triggered a decade of intense research on optical
modulation formats presenting a good resilience to transmission impairments. For some systems,
having an optical RZ waveform presents some signicant advantages. The purpose of the present
note is not to discuss transmission impairments and their mitigation. However, one can clearly
understand the benet of optical RZ modulation by considering the case of transmission at
40 Gbit/s and above. It is well known that an optimum optical transmission system is the
result of a compromise between the competing targets of reaching a high optical signal-to-noise
ratio (OSNR), calling for the use of a high transmitted power, and limiting the eect of optical
bre nonlinearities, which on the other hand requires a not-too-high transmitted power. A
favourable trade-o can be reached at high bit rates by employing RZ line coding. Due to group
15
NRZ data
CW
power
MZM1 MZM2
33% 50% 67%
1 bit period
33% RZ 50% RZ 67% RZ
NRZ
1 bit
period
Figure 10 RZ pulse carving using an MZM.
velocity dispersion, RZ pulses will disperse very fast at high bit rates. This means that well
dened pulses will cease to exist after only a short length of transmission bre. The peak power
of the pulses having been considerably decreased, they are no longer vulnerable to self-phase
modulation right after the optical repeaters, as is the case in a traditional optically amplied
link. This means that, in turn, the power of the signal can be increased, which results in an
improved OSNR at the end of the link.
In general, RZ pulses will experience a better resilience to optical bre nonlinearities. This
is also true in the case of BPSK or QPSK modulation where an RZ waveform can be used to
carry the phase information. In this case the intensity of the light is modulated periodically,
with a pulse being present in every single symbol slot. The pulse itself does not carry any
information, which is encoded onto the phase. However, the fact that all symbols present the
same temporal evolution will also provide benets in term of nonlinearities mitigation. Similar
arguments can be applied for more complex modulation formats. An additional benet is that
the generation of such advanced modulation formats by interferometric modulation methods
often present some transients, resulting in unwanted intensity uctuations, between the symbols.
A simple illustration of this point is the use of an MZM to generate BPSK modulation, where
it has been seen that each phase transition between 0 and is associated with an intensity dip.
By employing an RZ intensity on top of the modulation, these transients occurring in-between
symbols will be greatly suppressed.
Consequently there is a need for generating optical RZ waveforms, even though available
electrical signals make use of NRZ line coding. This can be achieved by the technique of pulse
carving illustrated in Fig. 10. By driving an MZM with an electrical clock signal, it becomes
possible to carve some pulses out of a continuous wave (CW) lightwave. If the frequency
f
m
of the sinusoidal electrical clock signal is equal to the bit rate B, and if the pulse carving
modulator is driven with a peak-to-peak voltage dierence equal to V
between a transmission
maximum and the next minimum, RZ pulses with a full-width at half-maximum (FWHM)
duration equal to 50% of the bit slot T
B
= 1/B are generated. Then a second data modulator
is used to modulate the signal in the modulation format of interest (e.g. OOK, as illustrated
16
here, BPSK, or more sophisticated formats). It is of course important to properly synchronise
the signals driving the pulse carver and the data modulator. Note that the order of the pulse
carver and data modulators can be swapped in such a scheme. Alternatively, RZ modulation
with a duty cycle of 33% or of 67% can be obtained by driving the pulse carver with a 2V
signal at f
m
= B/2 and biasing the modulator at a maximum or a minimum transmission,
respectively.
What to remember:
The linear electro-optic eect can be exploited to modify the refractive index of certain
crystals depending on an external electric eld, hence voltage, applied to them. The
change in refractive index is proportional to the applied voltage and quasi-instantaneous
(fs) compared to the modulation speeds attainable now.
This eect can be exploited in a straightforward way to perform phase modulation of
light.
In order to perform intensity modulation, one can take advantage of an interferometric
structure where the phase modulation is converted to intensity modulation. This is
typically done using integrated modulators in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer structure.
Frequency chirping can be avoided by driving a Mach-Zehnder modulator in push-pull
mode.
In this case, the complex envelope of the modulated signal can be expressed as
E
out
(t) = E
in
cos
_

2V
{V
bias
+ 2V
pp
d (t)}
_
(37)
A Mach-Zehnder modulator can also be used to perform binary phase modulation with
exact phase shifts of between the two modulation states.
RZ signals can be generated by combining a data modulator with an MZM driven by
a sinusoidal clock signal used as a pulse carver.
3 Dierential phase-shift keying
3.1 Introduction to phase modulation
Traditionally, binary modulation of the light intensity, such as OOK, is used in optical commu-
nication systems due to the inherent simplicity of the signal detection process, where a photodi-
ode directly converts the optical intensity variations into an electrical signal, from which binary
decision can be made from a single threshold receiver. However, it is well known from digital
communication theory that other formats of modulation such as phase or frequency modulation,
might result in a better receiver sensitivity when used in conjunction with a proper detection
scheme, thus potentially allowing an increase in the system power budget, hence in its reach.
This section deals with the transmission of phase modulated signals, which in a digital
context are known as phase-shift keying (PSK) signals. It will more specically focus on binary
PSK, for which the phase can take two values, ideally 0 and so that the distance between the
modulation states on the constellation diagram is maximised for a constant value of the optical
17
PSK signal
local oscillator
signal phase
signal
b
a
Figure 11 Illustration of direct detection (a) versus coherent detection (b) of a phase modulated signal.
power. Such a signal can be represented by
E
s
(t) = Re
_
_
P
s
e
j[s(t)+s(t)]
e
jst
e
s
_
, (38)
where P
s
is the signal constant power, the deterministic phase term
s
(t) takes values of 0 or
depending on the normalised binary modulating signal a (t)
s
(t) = a (t) , (39)
and
s
(t) is a phase noise term due to random phase uctuations associated with the light
emission process .
The photocurrent generated by a photodiode is proportional to the received optical power,
i (t) = RP (t) , (40)
where R is the responsivity of the photodiode. This value obviously turns out to be constant
for PSK modulated signals, as illustrated in Fig. 11. Consequently, direct detection in a photo-
diode discards the phase information and other methods need to be employed to recover phase
modulated data.
3.2 Coherent detection of PSK signals
One solution consists in beating the phase modulated signal with the light generated by a local
oscillator (LO) laser in a photodiode, as represented in Fig. 11. Expressing the electric eld of
the light generated by the local oscillator laser as
E
lo
(t) = Re
_
_
P
lo
e
j
lo
(t)
e
j
lo
t
e
lo
_
, (41)
and assuming that both the phase modulated signal and the local oscillator light have identical
states of polarisation, the total optical power after the two beams have been combined can be
expressed as
P
tot
(t) = P
s
+ P
lo
+ 2
_
P
s
P
lo
cos [(
s

lo
) t +
s
(t) +
s
(t)
lo
(t)] . (42)
18
In (41), P
lo
,
lo
and e
lo
are the power, angular frequency and polarisation of the local oscillator,
respectively, and
lo
(t) is a phase noise term similar to the one introduced in (38). The a.c.
term of the photocurrent is therefore
i
ac
(t) = 2R
_
P
s
P
lo
cos [(
s

lo
) t +
s
(t) +
s
(t)
lo
(t)] , (43)
which depends on the value of the information-carrying signal phase
s
(t).
At this point one should distinguish between homodyne systems, where the frequency of the
local oscillator is equal to that of the original signal,
lo
=
s
, and heterodyne systems, where
the frequency dierence
if
= |
s
lo
|, known as intermediate frequency, lies in the microwave
region. In the latter case, further processing is required in the microwave domain in order to
retrieve the original baseband data. A detailled description of those so-called coherent receivers
is beyond the scope of this note. Nevertheless, it is clear from the previous analysis that,
coherent optical receivers of this form are particularly challenging to implement in practice. This
is due to the facts that polarisation matching between the LO and the received signal should
be ensured, the frequency of the LO should match exactly that of the signal for homodyne
detection, and some action should be taken to ensure the relative phases of the signal and the
LO,
s
(t)
lo
(t), are somehow locked to each other, either optically for homodyne detection,
or electronically under the form of a carrier recovery circuit for heterodyne detection.
These challenges have been the object of intense research in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
One of the main motivations behind such eorts was the fact that phase modulation schemes
associated with coherent demodulation, whether homodyne or heterodyne, result in a better
receiver sensitivity than OOK used with direct detection. The picture was radically changed
with the development of the erbium-doped bre amplier (EDFA) initiated in the late 1980s.
An ecient and practical all-optical amplication scheme was now available, which could be
used as a booster or in-line amplier, thus relieving the power budget considerations, or even
as a preamplier with a theoretical quantum limit as low as 38.4 photons per bit for intensity
modulation - direct detection (IM-DD). Once a limitation in the design of optical communica-
tion systems, the receiver sensitivity requirements have therefore been considerably alleviated
by the introduction of the EDFA. As a consequence, the interest of the optical communica-
tion community shifted away from coherent systems until around 2004 when it was realised
that the progress made in high-speed electronic digital signal processing (DSP) circuits could
enable compensation of propagation impairments in the digital domain, provided coherent de-
tection is employed. Indeed, coherent receivers can allow the detection of both the in-phase and
quadrature components of the optical signal, as will be discussed in Sec. 6. It thus becomes
possible to map the entire optical eld to the electrical domain without any loss of information,
unlike when a direct detection receiver, which discards the phase information, is used. Fol-
lowing analogue-to-digital conversion of the signal, DSP techniques can be used to recover the
transmitted information after electronic compensation of group velocity or polarisation mode
dispersion and digital carrier recovery. The need for frequency locking of the local oscillator is
also relieved in this type of receiver using an intradyne scheme.
6
3.3 Self-homodyne DPSK detection
In order to circumvent some of the practical limitations associated with coherent systems, in
particular the need for a local oscillator laser, the principle of self-homodyne or interferometric
detection of PSK signals was introduced in the late 1980s. In this scheme, the received signal
is made to beat with a delayed version of itself in a photodiode. This is equivalent to perform-
ing phase-to-intensity modulation (PM-to-IM) conversion in an interferometer prior to direct
6
Coherent digital receivers are presented at a later point in this course.
19
XOR
CW PM
DI
PD
Figure 12 Principle of optical DPSK transmission.
XOR
Figure 13 Truth table of dierential encoding and dierential encoder implementation.
detection in a photodiode. It thus becomes possible to employ phase modulation in a way that
is compatible with direct detection, provided a suitable optical discriminator, typically a two
beam interferometer such as a Mach-Zehnder structure, is inserted at the receiver before the
photodiode. The electrical circuitry used to drive the phase modulator also needs to be adapted
in order to generate a slightly modied version of digital binary phase modulation known as
dierential phase-shift keying (DPSK).
The main idea behind DPSK modulation is to encode the data to be transmitted not on
absolute values of the optical phase, but onto phase dierences between consecutive bits taking
values 0 or . If the value of the bit to be transmitted is 0, then no phase change will
be imposed onto the signal. If, on the other hand, the bit to be transmitted takes the value
1, then the phase of the signal will be shifted by . It is this feature that enables phase
demodulation by comparison of the phase of one bit to that of the previous bit in a delay
interferometer at the receiver. An important consequence is that the absolute phase of the
signal may be allowed to drift over time, as would occur due to the phase noise of the laser
source. This may not be of consequence as long as the phase drift between consecutive sampling
times of the received signal, spaced by 1/B, is signicantly smaller than the expected jumps
between consecutive bits.
A schematic representation of an optical DPSK transmission system is shown in Fig. 12.
The data to be transmitted a
k
is rst dierentially encoded into a new sequence d
k
, which is
then used to drive the phase modulator. The dierential encoding rule is such that the state of
d
k
changes (from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1) each time a
k
= 1, while it remains the same
whenever a
k
= 0. It can easily be checked that d
k
can be obtained by performing exclusive OR
(XOR, also known as modulo-2 addition) operation between a
k
and a delayed version of d
k
that
has been fed-back to the input of the XOR gate with a delay corresponding to one bit, according
to
d
k
= a
k
d
k1
, (44)
where denotes the XOR operation. The dierential encoder structure as well as the truth table
of the dierential encoding process are represented in Fig. 13.
Once the dierentially encoded sequence has been generated, it is used to drive the phase
20
a
k
0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
d
k
0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0
k
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
k
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
r
k
1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0
r
k
0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
Table 1 Illustration of the principle of optical DPSK signal generation and demodulation. a
k
is the
original bit sequence to be transmitted and d
k
is the dierentially encoded sequence.
k
is the phase
of the transmitted signal while
k
is the phase dierence between two consecutive bits. Finally, r
k
is
the value of the recovered bit after direct detection of the output of the delay interferometer, and r
k
its
complementary.
modulator, or equivalently the MZM, resulting in phase shifts of 0 or . After transmission,
the signal is rst fed to a delay interferometer (DI), typically in a Mach-Zehnder conguration,
where the relative delay between the two arms is made equal to one bit period T = 1/B. The
power at the output of the Mach-Zehnder delay interferometer (MZDI) can therefore simply be
expressed as
P
MZDI,out
= P
MZDI,in
cos
2
_
(t) (t T)
2
_
. (45)
This power is then detected in a conventional photodiode. It is clear from (45) that the detected
power takes high value whenever the phase of two consecutive bits is equal, and is null otherwise.
Therefore a phase change can be detected, hence the value of the original sequence bit a
k
,
which has triggered this phase change according to the dierential encoding rule. In order
to illustrate the operation of a DPSK system with interferometric detection, the case of an
example bit sequence is considered in Table. 1, where it can be seen that the original pattern is
recovered after dierential encoding, phase modulation and interferometric detection. The DI,
which enables the demodulation of DPSK signals by converting the phase dierence information
between consecutive bits into an intensity modulated signal is therefore a key component for
this type of system. Its operation is detailled further in the following section.
3.4 Interferometric demodulation of DPSK
The structure of a DI based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer is represented in Fig. 14. The
incoming signal is rst split along two paths in an input 3-dB coupler. A propagation delay
of is introduced between the two paths before the two light contributions propagating in
each of the paths are recombined in an output 3-dB coupler. The eventual extra phase shift
dierence that may be experienced by the light contributions propagating in the two arms of
the interferometer is represented by
0
. In the following analysis the two 3-dB couplers are
assumed to be ideal so that their transfer characteristics can be described by
_
E
out,1
E
out,2
_
=
_
j
1
j
_ _
E
in,1
E
in,2
_
, (46)
where is the power splitting ratio of the coupler and the notations of the input and output
elds are introduced in Fig. 15. For a 3-dB coupler, = /2.
The electric eld at the two outputs of the DI can then be expressed as
E
out,1
(t) =
1
2
_
E
in
(t ) E
in
(t) e
j
0
, (47)
E
out,2
(t) =
j
2
_
E
in
(t ) + E
in
(t) e
j
0
, (48)
21
Figure 14 Delay interferometer based on a Mach-Zehnder structure. represents the extra propaga-
tion delay in the upper arm, while
0
is the extra phase shift dierence that may be experienced between
the elds propagating in the two arms.
Figure 15 Schematic representation of a directional coupler with power splitting ratio .
hence
|E
out,1
(t)|
2
=
1
4
_
|E
in
(t )|
2
+|E
in
(t)|
2
2Re
_
E
in
(t ) E
in
(t) e
j
0
_
_
, (49)
|E
out,2
(t)|
2
=
1
4
_
|E
in
(t )|
2
+|E
in
(t)|
2
+ 2Im
_
E
in
(t ) E
in
(t) e
j
0
_
_
. (50)
where it has been assumed all along that the two contributions E
in
(t ) and E
in
(t) have the
same state of polarisation. Assuming the usual notations for the input eld
E
in
(t) = Re
_
_
P
in
(t) e
j(t)
e
j
0
t
_
, (51)
the power at the upper output port of the DI can be expressed as
P
out,1
(t) =
1
4
_
P
in
(t ) + P
in
(t) 2
_
P
in
(t ) P
in
(t) cos ((t ) (t) +
0

0
)
_
.
(52)
Assuming a phase modulated signal for which the power envelope is constant, P
in
(t ) =
P
in
(t) = P
0
, the power at the upper output port of the delay interferometer becomes
P
out,1
(t) =
1
2
P
0
[1 cos ((t ) (t) +
0

0
)] . (53)
The power at the lower output port of the delay interferometer can be derived in a similar
fashion, leading to
P
out,2
(t) =
1
2
P
0
[1 + cos ((t ) (t) +
0

0
)] . (54)
22
-2 -1 0 1 2
-50
-40
-30
-20
-10
0
t
r
a
n
s
m
i
s
s
i
o
n

(
d
B
)
to destructive port
to constructive port
Figure 16 Transfer functions to the two output ports of a delay interferometer with delay = T = 1/B.
The delay interferometer is tuned so that
0

0
T = 2k, resulting in destructive and constructive
interference at
0
to output ports x and y, respectively. The frequency axis is normalised to the bit rate
B and the transfer functions are represented on a logarithmic scale (i.e. the quantities 10 log |T
DI,i
()|
2
,
where i = 1, 2, are represented.)
If furthermore the delay is equal to the bit period = T and the phase shift
0
is tuned so
that
0

0
T = 2k, the power at the two outputs of the DI can be simply expressed as
P
out,1
(t) = P
0
sin
2
_
(t T) (t)
2
_
, (55)
P
out,2
(t) = P
0
cos
2
_
(t T) (t)
2
_
. (56)
If (t T) (t) = 0, i.e. the phase of the bit at t is the same as that of the previous bit,
P
out,1
(t) = 0, (57)
P
out,2
(t) = P
0
. (58)
Constructive interference occurs at output port ywhile destructive interference occurs at output
port x. This is the reason why port x and port y are customarily described as destructive and
constructive ports of the delay interferometer, respectively. If (t T) (t) = , i.e. the
phase of the bit at t diers from that of the previous bit by ,
P
out,1
(t) = P
0
, (59)
P
out,2
(t) = 0, (60)
and constructive interference occurs at output port x while destructive interference occurs at
output port y. If
0

0
T = (2k + 1) , it can easily be checked that the two outputs are
swapped. The conclusions are still valid if RZ-DPSK modulation formats are used, in which
case pulse carving is implemented at the transmitter and the power envelope of the signal is
periodic with period T, hence P
in
(t T) = P
in
(t).
The operation of the delay interferometer can also be analysed in the frequency domain.
Fourier transforming (47) immediately leads to
E
out,1
() =
1
2
E
in
()
_
e
j
e
j
0
, (61)
23
hence the transfer function of the DI to output port x
T
DI,1
() =
E
out,1
()
E
in
()
= sin
_

0
2
_
e
j
+
0
+
2
. (62)
Similarly, starting from (48), the transfer function to output port y of the delay interferometer
can be easily obtained as
T
DI,2
() =
E
out,2
()
E
in
()
= cos
_

0
2
_
e
j
+
0
+
2
. (63)
The power transfer functions to the constructive and destructive ports of the DI, illustrated in
Fig. 16, are therefore given by
|T
DI,1
()|
2
= sin
2
_

0
2
_
, (64)
|T
DI,2
()|
2
= cos
2
_

0
2
_
. (65)
From these transfer functions it can be seen that:
1. The frequency response of the delay interferometer is periodic. This period is known as
free spectral range (FSR) and is equal to f
FSR
= 1/. It has been seen earlier that for
DPSK demodulation the delay of the DI should ideally be set to the bit slot duration
= T. In this case, the value of the FSR is equal to that of the bit rate f
FSR
= B.
2. The frequencies at which the maxima and nulls of the transfer function occur are deter-
mined by the phase shift
0
. For instance the transmission nulls to output port x occur
for
k
=
0
+ k2, where k is an integer, while they occur at
l
=
0
+ + l2, with
l integer, to output port y. Obviously, a transmission null to output port x corresponds
to a transmission maximum to output port y and vice-versa. More generally, the sum of
the two power transfer functions |T
DI,1
()|
2
+ |T
DI,2
()|
2
is equal to 1, which is a direct
consequence of power conservation.
3. The condition
0
0
T = 2k introduced in the time domain analysis of the DI therefore
implies that the carrier frequency
0
corresponds to a transmission null to output port
x and a transmission maximum to output port y, justifying further the denomination of
destructive and constructive ports, respectively.
4. In practice, the phase shift
0
can be expressed as
0
=
2
nL where L corresponds to the

physical length of a portion of one path in the delay interferometer and n is the refractive
index of the material used to make the DI. Consequently, the delay interferometer, or
more precisely the frequencies at which maxima or nulls occur to a specic output port,
can be tuned by adjusting the value of the refractive index n. This is usually performed
by applying a heating element to one arm of the DI, therefore changing the refractive
index and realising thermal tuning.
Finally, another useful relation can be derived for the complex envelope of the eld at
the output of the DI. Assuming that the DI is tuned so that
0

0
T = 2k, substituting
E (t) = E (t) e
j
0
t
into (47) and (48) immediately leads to
E
out,1
(t) =
1
2
[E
in
(t T) E
in
(t)] e
j
0
, (66)
E
out,2
(t) =
j
2
[E
in
(t T) +E
in
(t)] e
j
0
, (67)
24
power
frequency
power
frequency
power
frequency
DPSK
DB
AMI
Figure 17 Spectra and eye diagrams of DPSK demodulation in a 1-bit DI and balanced detection.
A DPSK signal generated in an MZM is sent to an MZDI with delay equal to 1/B, resulting in the
generation of an AMI signal at the destructive port and a DB signal at the constructive port. The
signals at the two outputs of the DI are detected in two balanced photodiodes, resulting in the balanced
eye diagram shown to the right. The dashed line shows the 0 current level. In this illustration, no
bandwidth limitation is present in the photodiodes.
where the constant phase term
0
can be ignored in most cases of practical interest. It can
therefore be seen that the elds at the two outputs of the DI are the sum and the dierence of
the input eld and a delayed version of itself.
The operation of an MZDI on a DPSK signal is illustrated in Fig. 17, where eye diagrams
and spectra at various stages of the demodulation and detection process are represented. A
DPSK signal generated in an MZM is input to the MZDI whose delay is exactly equal to the
reciprocal of the bit rate 1/B. Conversion to OOK is performed in the MZDI. The OOK signals
generated at the constructive and destructive ports exhibit dierent temporal and spectral
features. A format known as duobinary (DB) is generated at the constructive port, while another
format known as alternate mark inversion (AMI) is generated at the destructive port
7
. The
AMI spectrum exhibits a clear notch at the centre frequency, corresponding to the destructive
interference regime of the DI at this frequency. Demodulation of a DPSK signal can indeed
be seen as a linear process resulting in ltering of the signal input spectrum by the transfer
functions represented in Fig. 16 for the constructive and destructive ports, respectively.
Since the constructive and destructive port signals are OOK with opposite polarities, bal-
anced detection, where the photocurrents generated by a pair of identical photodiodes are sub-
tracted, is generally used for this type of receiver. This results in a balanced eye diagram (i.e.
with symmetric amplitudes around the baseline), as shown in Fig. 17. The balanced detection
process is known to result in an improved receiver sensitivity of 3 dB compared to OOK for
DPSK systems with interferometric demodulation.
7
The reasons for these denominations are beyond the scope of this note. Both signals are OOK, obviously
with opposite polarity due the destructive-constructive nature of the interference at the two ports, but exhibit
dierent bit-to-bit phase relations.
25
What to remember:
Other quantities than the power of a lightwave can be modulated to transmit informa-
tion. The phase of an optical carrier can, for instance, be modulated between 0 and ,
a modulation scheme known as binary phase-shift keying.
Recovering the phase information can be done in a coherent receiver. However, unless
more modern concepts briey outlined in Sec. 6 are used, traditional optical coherent
receiver designs are dicult to implement in practice.
Instead, one can perform dierential phase-shift keying modulation, where the binary
data is encoded into phase dierences between the bits. Such a modulation can be
easily demodulated by a delay interferometer that eectively converts the phase dier-
ence between consecutive bits in intensity modulation, which can in turn be detected
by a photodiode.
Such systems have been investigated rst until the early 1990s, where their attractive-
ness stemmed from the fact that they present an improved receiver sensitivity compared
to on-o keying when balanced detection is employed. Their investigation has seen a
renewed interest around 2000 due to their resilience to nonlinear eects in optical bres
thanks to their constant (or periodic in case return-to-zero pulse shaping is used) power
envelope. The focus has now shifted to more sophisticated multilevel modulation for-
mats used in conjunction with novel coherent receiver concepts, as discussed in Sec. 4
and 6.
4 The optical quadrature modulator
4.1 Motivations for optical multilevel modulation
In the previous section, it has been shown how a simple waveguide made in an electro-optic
material can be used to achieve phase modulation. By employing a Mach-Zehnder interferometer
structure, both intensity modulation (e.g. OOK) and binary (taking the values of 0 or , i.e.
BPSK) phase modulation can be achieved. It is well known from the general eld of digital
communications that those are extremely simple modulation formats. In our everyday life,
mobile communications, digital radio and television, broadband access etc are making use of
signicantly more sophisticated modulation formats in order to adapt to the limited bandwidths
of wireless and wireline channels, to deal with its peculiarities (e.g. multi-path interference
in wireless channels) and to share the limited bandwidth among users. Those applications,
however, typically operate at a rather modest baud rate compared to optical communication
systems where binary OOK modulation had been pushed up to 40 Gbit/s per wavelength
channel before the question of multilevel optical modulation formats started motivating the
research community.
The motivations behind the development of multilevel optical modulation formats are as
follows. At equal symbol rate, multilevel modulation can transport a higher bit rate, since it
encode several bits per symbol according to (5). Since it is the symbol rate that determines
the bandwidth of the signal, the spectral eciency (SE), expressed in units of bit/s/Hz, can be
increased. The SE is dened as
SE =
B
, (68)
where B is the bit rate carried by each individual wavelength channel (assumed to be equal)
26
and is the frequency spacing between the centre frequencies of each wavelength channel
8
.
Consequently, in the same bandwidth, more data can be transmitted by employing multilevel
modulation. To this respect, the use of binary OOK modulation, as done to a large extent until
now, is a fairly inecient use of bandwidth.
However, the SE cannot be increased arbitrarily. A fundamental limit to the channel ca-
pacity C, which is dened as the maximum information rate that can be transmitted over the
channel, is given by Shannons theorem
C = W log
2
(1 + SNR) , (69)
where W is the channel bandwidth and SNR is the signal-to-noise ratio (assuming additive
white Gaussian noise). The spectral eciency can be identied with C/W. Consequently,
increasing the SE can only be achieved at the expense of a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
requirement. This also holds true for multilevel modulation, which, at the same symbol rate,
require a higher SNR due to a lower noise tolerance, which can be understood intuitively from
the smaller geometrical distance between the modulation states on the constellation diagram
for a xed average power.
From a practical perspective, multilevel optical modulation formats allow to generate high
bit rate optical signals from lower bit rate electronics since the electronics only need to operate
at the symbol rate. This oers the opportunity to generate optical signals at a bit rate larger
than the current limits of electronics, which, even though constantly progressing overt time,
may appear as a bottleneck with respect to what can be achieved optically. Furthermore,
the fact that high-bandwidth electronic components are expensive make such a scheme also
economically attractive.
The rst deployed optical multilevel modulation is QPSK at 40 Gbit/s, carrying two bits
per transmitted symbol, and therefore requiring only 20 Gbit/s electronics. Using polarisa-
tion multiplexing, it even becomes possible to generate an 100 Gbit/s signal from 25 Gbit/s
electronics. Such systems, relying on a digital coherent receiver, are currently being deployed.
Therefore it is important to be able to generate complex multilevel optical modulation
formats. In the remaining of this section, it will be shown how, by integrating MZMs into an
interferometric structure, it becomes possible to generate arbitrary optical modulation formats.
4.2 Principle of the optical IQ modulator
The modulator structure represented in Fig. 18 is now considered. This type of optical modula-
tor is referred to in the literature under dierent names, including optical quadrature modulator,
nested Mach-Zehnder modulator, dual parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator, or optical IQ modula-
tor. It consists of two MZMs that are themselves embedded into a Mach-Zehnder interferometer
structure. Each modulator is driven by an independent signal, u
I
(t) and u
Q
(t), respectively.
An additional static phase shift of /2 between the two arms of the interferometric superstruc-
ture is furthermore introduced. If each MZM is biased in a condition corresponding to that
illustrated in Fig. 9, i.e. V
bias
= V
, and assuming chirp-free modulation, then the output

eld E
out
can be easily calculated using (37), immediately leading to
E
out
=
1
2
E
out
_
cos
_

V
u
I
(t)
_
+ cos
_

V
u
I
(t)
_
e
j
2
_
. (70)
8
One can in principle also dene how spectrally ecient a given modulation format is by considering the
spectral width of the modulated signal instead of . This however requires a common denition of the spectral
width of a signal (e.g. 3 dB bandwidth -or FWHM- or 10 dB bandwidth?) in order to enable fair comparisons.
The fact that optical communication systems typically make use of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and
that they operate on a xed frequency spacing grid according to the International Telecommunications Union
(ITU) standards make the denition of (68), which does not have this ambiguity, more meaningful in practice.
27
Figure 18 Principle of operation of the optical IQ modulator. Two electrical signals u
I
and u
Q
are
driving each MZM in the interferometric structure. The reachable points in the complex (I, Q) plane
are indicated by the blue square to the right.
A direct comparison with (7) shows that arbitrary in-phase and quadrature components of the
optical signal can be synthesised in this way.
Fig. 18 also shows the points in the complex plane (I, Q) that can be reached using this type
of modulator. It thus becomes possible to generate any optical eld, and thus any modulation
format, provided the driving signals u
I
(t) and u
Q
(t) can be synthesised. For this purpose the
non-linear relation between the electric driving signals and the coordinate along the I or Q
dimension should obviously be taken into account. In principle, arbitrary electric signals can be
synthesised using an arbitrary waveform generator (AWG). However, the speed at which such
devices can operate is still relatively limited. In order to achieve the highest possible symbol
rates, one is often in practice limited to binary electronic signals, imposing some constraints
on the way such a modulator can be operated. The generation of QPSK and 16-quadrature
amplitude modulation (QAM) using such an IQ modulator structure are taken as examples in
what follows.
4.3 QPSK signal generation
The application of such a modulator to the generation of QPSK signals is straightforward and
is illustrated in Fig. 19. Each MZM in the structure is driven with a binary electrical signal as
a BPSK modulator as discussed in Sec. 2.4. The relative /2 phase shift in one of the arms
has the eect of rotating the BPSK constellation generated in this arm. After recombination
of the two signals in the output Y-junction, a QPSK constellation is obtained. Since one of
the benets of binary phase modulation using an MZM is to result in exact phase shifts,
this property is maintained for both generated BPSK signals. However, one practical diculty
is to adjust the relative phase shift to /2 to guarantee the orthogonality between the two
modulations. Recalling that using an MZM to perform BPSK modulation results in unwanted
intensity dips each time the phase is ipped between 0 and , it can easily be shown that the
output intensity of a QPSK signal generated in this way also presents two levels of intensity dips,
one corresponding to a transition between 0 and in only one of the BPSK modulator, as well
as one occurring when such transitions are simultaneous in the two BPSK modulators. These
intensity dips can easily be visualised in the constellation diagram with transitions associated
with this type of modulation, as shown in Fig. 1, where it can be seen that transitions between
modulation states can either be achieved along a path parallel to the I or Q axes, or via the
origin.
28
CW
data stream 1
data stream 2
power
t
phase
t
Figure 19 Principle of optical QPSK signal generation. Two binary electrical signals are used to drive
the two MZMs of the structure as binary phase modulators, resulting in phase modulation states of 0
and . The phase states are rotated by a static value of /2 in one of the arms of the interferometer
superstructure before the two signals are recombined, leading to an optical QPSK signal.
QPSK signals generated in this way can be detected and demodulated using either a coherent
receiver, or an interferometric detection technique similar to the one used for DPSK, following
appropriate dierential encoding. The interferometric detection of dierential quadrature phase-
shift keying (DQPSK) signals will be described in more details in Sec. 5.
4.4 Square QAM signal generation
QAM formats are widely used in a number of digital transmission applications, including e.g.
digital video broadcasting. They are an extension of QPSK, which can alternatively be consid-
ered as a 4-QAM format, utilising an increasing number of modulation states in the in-phase
and quadrature dimensions.
As an example of a QAM modulation format that can still be generated at high baud rates
using binary electronics, the case of 16-QAM is considered. The constellation diagram of 16-
QAM consists of 16 states, hence four bits per symbol, on a square grid. One possible way to
generate optical 16-QAM modulation is to drive an IQ modulator with two four-level electrical
signals, also known as 4-pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) signals, as shown in Fig. 20. These
signals can be synthesised by adding two binary OOK-NRZ signals of dierent amplitudes. For
instance, adding two a.c. coupled OOK signals, one having a peak-to-peak voltage of V
pp
, and
the other with a peak-to-peak voltage of V
pp
/2, results in a 4-PAM signal with equal spacing
between consecutive levels. By driving the two MZMs in the IQ modulator structure, each
biased at minimum transmission, the four levels of the 4-PAM signals are mapped to four
electric eld values for each quadrature of the signal, resulting in a 16-QAM optical signal.
Driving each MZM between two consecutive transmission maxima will result in a maximum
average optical power at the modulator output. However, in this case, due the nonlinear nature
of the eld versus applied voltage of the MZMs, the spacing between the levels in the 4-PAM
signals should be optimised, as shown in Fig. 20. Due to the diculty of nding high-bandwidth
driving ampliers able to generate a suciently high peak-to-peak voltage without distortion
of the 4-PAM signals in order to drive the MZMs between consecutive maxima, the MZMs may
29
power / field
electrical
4PAM signal
4PAM
4PAM
optical 16QAM
4PAM electrical signal
generation:
4 bits per symbol
Figure 20 Principle of optical 16-QAM signal generation using an IQ modulator. First, two 4-PAM
electrical signals are generated by combining two binary digital bit streams each. Then the 4-PAM
signals are used to drive the two MZMs in the IQ modulator structure, resulting in an optical 16-QAM
signal.
be driven with a lower peak-to-peak voltage and appropriate level spacings in practice.
Fig. 21 shows an example of 14 Gbaud (hence 56 Gbit/s) 16-QAM signal generation, in-
cluding the eye diagram of the generated electrical 4-PAM signal, the intensity at the output
of the IQ modulator, and the constellation recovered in a digital coherent receiver.
5 Dierential quadrature phase-shift keying
The basic principle of optical DQPSK (dierential quadrature phase shift keying) modulation
is to represent each couple of two bits of the information sequence to be transmitted by optical
phase dierences between consecutive symbols taking values into
_
2
, 0,

2
,
_
. Each transmit-
ted symbol therefore corresponds to two bits of information, meaning that the symbol rate is
equal to half of the bit rate.
a b c
Figure 21 Generation of a 16-QAM signal at 14 Gbaud using an optical IQ-modulator. a) Eye diagram
of the 4-PAM signal used to drive one of the Mach-Zehnder modulators. b) Measured intensity eye
diagram at the output of the modulator. c) Constellation obtained at the output of the IQ modulator.
Results obtained in DTU Fotoniks systems laboratory.
30
5.1 Signal generation
/2
CW

u
k
v
k
I
k
Q
k
/4
- /4
+
_
+
_
i
1
i
2
i
3
i
4

r
k
s
k
pre-coder
encoder
decoder
Figure 22 Conguration of an optical DQPSK transmitter and receiver.
The structure of an optical DQPSK system with interferometric detection is shown in Fig. 22.
The transmitter consists of an electrical pre-coder requiring logic circuits functioning at half of
the bit rate, and an electro-optical encoder. The receiver is made from a pair of Mach-Zehnder
interferometers and balanced receivers. The principle of an optical DQPSK system is described
in details in what follows. The outputs of the dierent stages are illustrated with a concrete
example in Table 2.
The bit sequence b
k
, at a bit rate of B bit/s, is rst divided into two sets of odd and even
numbered bits, u
k
and v
k
, respectively, each at a bit rate of B/2 bit/s.
u
k
= b
2k1
, v
k
= b
2k
. (71)
The sets of bits (u
k
, v
k
) are then dierentially encoded into (I
k
, Q
k
) according to
I
k
= (u
k
v
k
) (u
k
I
k1
) + (u
k
v
k
) (v
k
Q
k1
) , (72)
Q
k
= (u
k
v
k
) (v
k
Q
k1
) + (u
k
v
k
) (u
k
I
k1
) . (73)
The pre-coded sequences (I
k
, Q
k
) are therefore calculated based on the values of (u
k
, v
k
) to be
transmitted, and on their previous values (I
k1
, Q
k1
) taken at a sampling interval equal to
= 2/B.
The DQPSK transmitter consists of one IQ modulator where the two chirp-free MZMs are
used as phase modulators and are therefore biased at a null transmission point and driven by
the dierentially encoded sequences I
k
and Q
k
with a voltage corresponding to full swing (i.e.
between two consecutive extrema of their transfer functions). The complex representation of
the optical eld at the output of the transmitter can be written
E (t = t
k
) = E
0
cos
_
(I
k
Q
k
) +

2
2
_
e
j
(I
k
+Q
k
)+
2
2
, (74)
from which the following notation for the values of the amplitude and phase at the sampling
time are introduced
E (t = t
k
) = |E (t = t
k
)| e
j(t=t
k
)
= |E
k
| e
j
k
. (75)
31
00
11
01
10
Figure 23 Constellation for the complex representation of the electric eld at the output of the optical
DQPSK encoder. The phase assignment for the pre-coded dibits (I
k
, Q
k
) is represented.
b
k
01 10 10 00 11 10 11 10 01 01
u
k
0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0
v
k
1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1
I
k
1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0
Q
k
0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1
|E
k
| /E
0
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
k
7
4
4
3
4
3
4
7
4
4
5
4
7
4
5
4
3
4
2
0

2

2

2
r
k
1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0
s
k
0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1
Table 2 Illustration of optical DQPSK signal generation and decoding based on the transmission of
an example sequence.
The values taken by the amplitude |E
k
| and phase
k
of the optical eld at the transmitter
output are shown in Table 2 for the specic bit pattern example considered in this section. It
can be seen that the eld amplitude is constant (away from transitions) while its phase is taking
values within
_
4
,
3
4
,
5
4
,
7
4
_
. Each couple of pre-coded bits (I
k
, Q
k
) is therefore assigned an
absolute optical phase value
k
. The constellation diagram for the modulated eld is represented
in Fig. 23 as a function of the pre-coded bits (I
k
, Q
k
). It can be seen that the phase values
are assigned to the pre-coded bits according to a Gray code, meaning that only one bit value
changes between two consecutive phases. As it is most likely that in the detection process errors
will be introduced between adjacent phases (i.e. where the distance between the points in the
constellation diagram of Fig. 23 is minimum), this attribution has the eect of minimising the
probability of errors (i.e. only one of the 2 bits (I
k
, Q
k
) will be erroneously detected for a given
symbol detection error).
5.2 Interferometric detection
After transmission, the signal is split into two and input to two Mach-Zehnder interferometers
made of 3-dB couplers and an unit delay = 2/B. A relative phase shift equal to /4 is
32
introduced between the two arms of each interferometer. Each Mach-Zehnder is followed by a
balanced photo-detector where the two output elds are detected, and where, after subtraction
of the generated photocurrents, the output signal is generated. The photocurrents generated
by the rst pair of photodiodes can be written as a function of the optical eld input to the
upper Mach-Zehnder interferometer E
u
according to
i
1
(t) = R
1
|E
u
|
2
cos
2
_
(t) (t ) +

4
2
_
, (76)
i
2
(t) = R
2
|E
u
|
2
cos
2
_
(t) (t )
3
4
2
_
. (77)
Assuming the same responsivities R
1
= R
2
for the two photodiodes, as expected in a balanced
detector, the output current of the upper receiver can be expressed according to
r (t) = i
2
(t) i
1
(t) = R
1
|E
u
|
2
2
2
[sin (t) cos (t)] , (78)
where
(t) = (t) (t ) . (79)
The output current of the lower receiver can be calculated in a similar way, leading to
s (t) = i
3
(t) i
4
(t) = R
3
|E
l
|
2
2
2
[sin(t) + cos (t)] , (80)
It can be observed that the optical phase dierences
k
= (t = t
k
) take values into
_
2
, 0,

2
,
_
, and that each dibit of the original information sequence (u
k
, v
k
) is encoded into
a value of
k
.
From equations (78) and (80), it becomes possible to evaluate the recovered bit sequences
r
k
and t
k
. It is found from Table 2 that
r
k
= u
k
, t
k
= v
k
. (81)
The original dibits (u
k
, v
k
) are therefore recovered at the output of the optical DQPSK decoder.
One of the practical benets of the optical DQPSK scheme is that it only requires elec-
trical and optoelectronic components having a bandwidth compatible with half of the bit rate
eectively transmitted over the optical link, as all the electronic processing, modulation and
detection are performed on the tributary bit streams u
k
and v
k
.
What to remember:
Multilevel modulation can be used to increase the spectral eciency of optical systems
since each transmitted symbol, whose duration determines the spectral width, can carry
several bits of information.
A rst successful implementation of multilevel modulation that has been presented
rst in 2002 is dierential quadrature phase-shift keying (DQPSK), making use of four
dierential phase levels, hence transmitting two bits per symbol.
Similarly to dierential binary phase-shift keying, DQPSK can be detected in pho-
todiodes following demodulation by a set of delay interferometers, making the scheme
highly compatible with legacy on-o keying systems. This requires dierential encoding
to be applied to the data at the transmitter.
33
a b
Figure 24 Phase diversity coherent receiver. (a) Realisation of an optical 90
hybrid circuit, which,

followed by balanced receivers, allows detection of the in-phase and quadrature components of the optical
signal, hence the mapping of the optical eld into the electrical domain. (b) Reminder of the transfer
matrix of a 3-dB directional coupler, as used in the optical 90
hybrid circuit shown in (a).

More recently, DQPSK used in conjunction with polarisation multiplexing and the
digital coherent receiver concept briey introduced in Sec. 6 has turned out to be a
popular modulation format allowing the implementation of 100 Gbit/s systems based
on 25 Gbit/s electronics. Such systems are being deployed commercially.
6 Phase diversity receiver
It has been seen in Sec. 3 and 5 that BPSK as well as DQPSK can be detected using an
interferometric demodulation scheme, where some phase-to-intensity modulation conversion is
performed rst in a delay interferometer, before detection in balanced receivers. The scheme
can be extended to modulation formats making use of more phase levels such as 8-PSK and even
16-PSK, however at the price of a signicantly higher complexity, as well as a reduction of the
performance. For instance, 8-PSK (with proper dierential encoding) typically requires four DI
and balanced receivers for its detection. It is clear that it would be challenging to increase the
number of bits per symbol further and still use some kind of interferometric detection scheme.
Furthermore, such a technique would not allow the detection of more advanced modulation
formats such as QAM, as introduced in Sec. 4.4.
On the other hand, coherent detection allows the detection of arbitrary modulation format
and can be used to map the complex eld of the signal from the optical to the electrical domain.
This can be achieved using a so-called phase diversity receiver whose key component is an optical
90
hybrid coupler represented in Fig. 24.

After recalling the transfer matrix of a 3-dB directional coupler, as shown in Fig. 24(a), it
can easily be shown that, if a signal eld E
s
and a local oscillator eld E
lo
are input to the
rst and fourth input ports of the optical 90
hybrid, respectively, then the following elds are

recovered at the four outputs
E
1
=
1
2
(E
s
E
lo
) , (82)
E
2
=
j
2
(E
s
+ E
lo
) , (83)
E
3
=
j
2
(E
s
jE
lo
) , (84)
E
4
=
j
2
(jE
s
+ E
lo
) . (85)
34
It is assumed rst that the states of polarisation of the signal and the LO are identical at the
receiver input. Expressing the electric eld of the signal as
E
s
= Re
_
_
P
s
e
js
e
jst
_
, (86)
and similarly for the local oscillator
E
lo
= Re
_
_
P
lo
e
j
lo
e
j
lo
t
_
, (87)
the elds at the output of the 90
hybrid circuit as expressed in (82)-(85) can be easily expanded.

The general case of the linear superposition of two elds
E = E
s
+ aE
lo
(88)
is considered for simplicity. The total eld E can be expanded as
E = Re
__
_
P
s
e
js
+ a
_
P
lo
e
j
lo
e
j(
lo
s)t
_
e
jst
_
, (89)
which can be reformulated in terms of the complex envelopes of the signal (with respect to the
signal frequency) and the local oscillator (with respect to the local oscillator frequency), E
s
and
E
lo
, respectively,
E = Re
__
E
s
+ a E
lo
e
j(
lo
s)t
_
e
jst
_
(90)
Provided the frequency dierence
lo
s
is small with respect to
s
, the term within parentheses
() can be considered as the complex envelope of a eld at
s
. This condition will be veried in
practice, where the local oscillator will be tuned close to the signal frequency, according to the
distinction between homodyne and heterodyne detection introduced in Sec. 3.2. In this case,
the power can be simply expressed as
P =
E
s
+ a E
lo
e
j(
lo
s)t
2
, (91)
hence
P = |E
s
|
2
+|a|
2
|E
lo
|
2
+ 2Re
_
E
s
E
lo
a
e
j(s
lo
)t
_
. (92)
Applying this general equation to the cases of (82)-(85), the optical power at the four outputs
of the hybrid can be expressed as
P
1
=
1
4
_
|E
s
|
2
+|E
lo
|
2
2 Re
_
E
s
E
lo
e
j(s
lo
)t
__
, (93)
P
2
=
1
4
_
|E
s
|
2
+|E
lo
|
2
+ 2 Re
_
E
s
E
lo
e
j(s
lo
)t
__
, (94)
P
3
=
1
4
_
|E
s
|
2
+|E
lo
|
2
2 Im
_
E
s
E
lo
e
j(s
lo
)t
__
, (95)
P
4
=
1
4
_
|E
s
|
2
+|E
lo
|
2
+ 2 Im
_
E
s
E
lo
e
j(s
lo
)t
__
. (96)
By subtracting P
1
and P
2
and P
3
and P
4
, one gets
P
2
P
1
= Re
_
E
s
E
lo
e
j(s
lo
)t
_
, (97)
P
4
P
3
= Im
_
E
s
E
lo
e
j(s
lo
)t
_
. (98)
35
Therefore, from (97) and (98) it can be seen that, if the outputs of the 90
hybrid are
detected and subtracted in a balanced detector, the generated photocurrents i
I
and i
Q
are
proportional to the real and imaginary part of the quantity same quantity E
s
E
lo
e
j(s
lo
)t
.
Considering the case of ideal homodyne detection rst, =
s
lo
= 0, and assuming a
CW laser with negligible phase noise is used as the LO, E
lo
=
P
lo
,
i
I
= R
P
lo
Re {E
s
} , (99)
i
Q
= R
P
lo
Im{E
s
} , (100)
where R is the responsivity of the photodiodes in the two balanced receivers, assumed to be
equal. Therefore it is clear that it is possible to recover both the in-phase and the quadrature
components of the signal in the electrical domain, hence to detect arbitrary modulation formats.
In the more general case of a signal and LO having dierent frequencies = 0, and if the
signal and LO lasers present some random variations of the phase
s
(t) and
lo
(t), according
to (38) and (41), respectively, then the photocurrents can be expressed as
i
I
(t) = R
_
P
s
(t) P
lo
cos [t
s
(t)
s
(t) +
lo
(t)] , (101)
i
Q
(t) = R
_
P
s
(t) P
lo
sin [t
s
(t)
s
(t) +
lo
(t)] . (102)
If the photocurrents are sampled at some time instants t
k
in a digital-to-analogue converter
(DAC), not necessarily synchronous to the symbol rate, and if the frequency oset and the
phase of the signal laser with respect to that of the LO laser can be estimated, then it becomes
possible to recover the in-phase and quadrature components of the signal, and thus to detect
any modulation format. This is the principle behind intradyne receivers making use of DSP
for the recovery of the transmitted data. For those receivers, the LO is tuned close, but does
not have to be locked to the signal frequency and some DSP functionalities are implemented
following the optical hybrid, balanced detectors, and analogue-to-digital conversion. It is also
unnecessary to mach the polarisation of the LO to that of the received signal if a phase and
polarisation diversity receiver is implemented. In this conguration, both the received signal
and the LO are resolved onto orthogonal polarisation components before being processed by
two sets of 90
hybrid and balanced receiver prior to analogue-to-digital conversion. Since

the whole optical eld is mapped to the electrical domain, it becomes possible to compensate
electronically for transmission impairments such as group-velocity dispersion. Those systems
have been intensively researched since around 2004 and the rst generation of commercial
products are being deployed.
What to remember:
The detection of advanced modulation formats can be performed in a phase diversity
receiver that eectively maps the optical eld to the electrical domain.
In this way the in-phase and quadrature components of the signal can be recovered.
Modern coherent receivers employing this technique no longer rely on precise matching
of the frequencies of the transmitter and local oscillator lasers, nor on complex optical
or electrical phase locked loops, which had hindered the earlier generation of coherent
receivers.
Instead, analogue-to-digital converters followed by digital signal processing techniques
enable the signal to be processed in the digital domain, where the carrier can be recov-
ered and some transmission impairments can be compensated.
36
Today, systems of this type are being deployed for polarisation-multiplexed quadrature
phase-shift keying and future generations using quadrature-amplitude modulation are
being intensively investigated.
Appendices
A List of acronyms
AMI alternate mark inversion
AWG arbitrary waveform generator
BPSK binary phase-shift keying
CW continuous wave
DAC digital-to-analogue converter
DB duobinary
DI delay interferometer
DML directly modulated laser
DPSK dierential phase-shift keying
DQPSK dierential quadrature phase-shift keying
DSP digital signal processing
EDFA erbium-doped bre amplier
FWHM full-width at half-maximum
FSR free spectral range
IM-DD intensity modulation - direct detection
LO local oscillator
MZDI Mach-Zehnder delay interferometer
MZM Mach-Zehnder modulator
NRZ non return-to-zero
OOK on-o keying
OSNR optical signal-to-noise ratio
PAM pulse amplitude modulation
PSK phase-shift keying
QPSK quadrature phase-shift keying
37
QAM quadrature amplitude modulation
RF radio frequency
RZ return-to-zero
SE spectral eciency
SNR signal-to-noise ratio
WDM wavelength division multiplexing
38

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Generation and Detection of Optical Modulation Formats

to the electrode of an electro-optic waveguide

6 V, even though signif-

. When restricted to a portion limited

and the nominal voltage levels are

, which is twice as large as when a phase modulator is used. Furthermore, this

nL where L corresponds to the

, and assuming chirp-free modulation, then the output

hybrid circuit, which,

hybrid circuit shown in (a).

hybrid coupler represented in Fig. 24.

hybrid, respectively, then the following elds are

hybrid circuit as expressed in (82)-(85) can be easily expanded.

hybrid and balanced receiver prior to analogue-to-digital conversion. Since

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