CHAPTER FOUR

Coherent Light Wave

Systems
Outline
 Basic Concepts
 Types of coherent detector
 SNR
 Modulation format
 Demodulation Schemes
 BER in Synchronous - and Asynchronous- Receivers
 Sensitivity Degradation
 System Performance
 WDM components
 Coherent Detection
 The basic idea behind coherent detection consists of combining the
optical signal coherently with a continuous-wave (CW) optical field
before it falls on the photo detector .

fig. Schematic illustration of a coherent detection scheme

 The CW field is generated locally at the receiver using a narrow
line width laser, called the local oscillator (LO)
 Cont…
 Let us write the optical signal using complex notation as

 where ω0 is the carrier frequency, As is the amplitude, and

ϕs is the phase.
 The optical field associated with the local oscillator is given by a
similar expression,

 where ALO, ωLO, and ϕ LO represent the amplitude, frequency, and

phase of the local oscillator, respectively.
 Since a photo detector responds to the optical intensity, the optical
power incident at the photo detector is given by , where
K is a constant of proportionality.

Where
 Homodyne and Heterodyne Detection
1. Homodyne Detection
 In this coherent-detection technique, the local-oscillator
frequency ωLO is selected to coincide with the signal-carrier
frequency ω0 so that ωIF = 0.
 the photocurrent (I = RP, where R is the detector responsivity) is
given by

 The last term in the above Eq. contains the information

transmitted and is used by the decision circuit.
 Consider the case in which the local-oscillator phase is locked to
the signal phase so that Φs = ΦLO. The homodyne signal is then
given by
2. Heterodyne Detection
In the case of heterodyne detection the local
oscillator frequency ωLO is chosen to differ form
the signal-carrier frequency ω0 such that the
intermediate frequency ωIF is in the microwave
region (νIF ∼ 1 GHz)

Since PLO >> Ps in practice, the direct-current

(dc) term is nearly constant and can be removed
easily using band pass filters.
The heterodyne signal is then given by the (ac)
 Cont….
 Similar to the case of homodyne detection, information can be
transmitted through amplitude, phase, or frequency modulation of
the optical carrier.
 More importantly, the local oscillator still amplifies the received
signal by a large factor, there by improving the SNR.
Advantages of Heterodyne Detection
 The advantage gained at the expense of the 3dB penalty is that the
receiver design is considerably simplified because an optical phase-
locked loop is no longer needed.
 Fluctuations in both Φs and ΦLO still need to be controlled using
narrow-line width semiconductor lasers for both optical sources.
 However, the line width requirements are quite moderate when an
asynchronous demodulation scheme is used.
 This feature makes the heterodyne-detection scheme quite suitable
for practical implementation in coherent light wave systems.
 Signal-to-Noise Ratio
 The advantage of coherent detection for light wave systems
can be made more quantitative by considering the SNR of the
receiver current
 The receiver current fluctuates because of shot noise and
thermal noise.
 The variance σ2 of current fluctuations is obtained by adding
the two contributions so that
where

 The SNR is obtained by dividing the average signal power by

the average noise power. In the heterodyne case, it is given by
 Cont…
 In the homodyne case, the SNR is larger by a factor of 2 if
we assume that φs = φLO
 Since the local-oscillator power PLO can be controlled at
the receiver, it can be made large enough that the receiver
noise is dominated by shot noise. More specifically,

When
 Under the same conditions, the dark-current contributions to the shot
noise is negligible (Id << RPLO). The SNR is then given
where R = ηq/hν
 Cont..
• The use of coherent detection allows one to achieve the shot-
noise limit even for p-i-n receivers whose performance is
generally limited by thermal noise.
• Moreover, in contrast with the case of avalanche photodiode
(APD) receivers, this limit is realized without adding any
excess shot noise.
• It is useful to express the SNR in terms of the number of
photons, Np, received within a single bit.
• At the bit rate B, the signal power is related to Np as .
Typically Δf ≈ B/2. By using these values of and Δf in the above
equation , the SNR is given by a simple expression

• In the case of homodyne detection, SNR is larger by a factor of 2 and

is given by SNR = 4ηNp.
 Demodulation Schemes
• Demodulation can be carried out either synchronously or
asynchronously.
• Asynchronous demodulation is also called incoherent in the radio
communication literature.
• In the optical communication literature, the term coherent
detection is used in a wider sense.
• A light wave system is called coherent as long as it uses a local
oscillator irrespective of the demodulation technique used to
convert the IF signal to baseband frequencies.
• This section focuses on the synchronous and asynchronous
demodulation schemes for heterodyne systems.
 Heterodyne Synchronous Demodulation

f.g .Block diagram of a synchronous heterodyne receiver.

 shows a synchronous heterodyne receiver schematically. The current

generated at the photodiode is passed through a band pass filter (BPF) centered
at the intermediate frequency ωIF.
 The filtered current in the absence of noise can be written as

is the phase difference between

the local oscillator and the signal.

 Cont……..
The noise is also filtered by the BPF. Using the in-
phase and out-of-phase quadrature components of
the filtered Gaussian noise.
For synchronous demodulation, I f (t) is multiplied
by cos(IFt) and filtered by a low-pass filter.
The resulting baseband signal is

 where angle brackets denote low-pass filtering used for

rejecting the ac components oscillating at 2ωIF.
 in the above Equation only the in-phase noise component
affects the performance of synchronous heterodyne receivers.
 Synchronous demodulation requires recovery of the
microwave carrier at the intermediate frequency ωIF.
 Heterodyne Asynchronous Demodulation
 It does not require recovery of the microwave carrier at the
intermediate frequency ,resulting in a much simpler receiver
design.
 The filtered signal If (t) is converted to the baseband by using an
envelope detector, followed by a low-pass filter.

f,g Block diagram of an asynchronous heterodyne receiver.

Cont……
The signal received by the decision circuit is just
Id = |If |, and is given by

The main difference is that both the in-phase and out-

of-phase quadrature components of the receiver noise
affect the signal.
The SNR is thus degraded compared with the case of
synchronous demodulation.
sensitivity degradation resulting from the reduced SNR
is quite small (about 0.5 dB). As the phase stability
requirements are quite modest in the case of
asynchronous demodulation, this scheme is commonly
used for coherent light wave systems.
Cont……
 The asynchronous heterodyne receiver requires modifications
when the FSK and PSK modulation formats are used .

Fig (a) Dual-filter FSK and (b) DPSK asynchronous heterodyne receivers.
Cont………..
The FSK dual-filter receiver uses two separate branches to
process the 1 and 0 bits whose carrier frequencies, and
hence the intermediate frequencies, are different.
The scheme can be used whenever the tone spacing is
much larger than the bit rates, so that the spectra of 1 and
0 bits have negligible overlap (wide-deviation FSK). .
The two BPFs have their center frequencies separated
exactly by the tone spacing so that each BPF passes either
1 or 0 bits only.
 The FSK dual-filter receiver can be thought of as two
ASK single-filter receivers in parallel whose outputs are
combined before reaching the decision circuit.
 Cont …..
A single-filter receiver can be used for FSK
demodulation if its bandwidth is chosen to be wide
enough to pass the entire bit stream.
The signal is then processed by a frequency
discriminator to identify 1 and 0 bits. This scheme
works well only for narrow-deviation FSK, for
which tone spacing is less than or comparable to the
bitrate (FM≤1).
The use of DPSK format permits asynchronous
demodulation by using the delay scheme. The idea is to
multiply the received bit stream by a replica of it that has
been delayed by one bit period.
Cont…..
 The resulting signal has a component of the form cos(k
-  k-1), where k is the phase of the kth bit, which can be
used to recover the bit pattern since information is
encoded in the phase difference k - k-1.
 Such a scheme requires phase stability only over a few
bits and can be implemented by using DFB(Distributed
feedback) semiconductor lasers.
 The amount of delay in that case depends on the tone
spacing and is chosen such that the phase is shifted by π
for the delayed signal.
 Reading Assignment
 Modulation Formats
Amplitude-shift Keying (ASK),
Phase-shift Keying (PSK),and
Frequency-shift Keying (FSK)
 Bit Error Rate (BER)
The BER, and the receiver sensitivity, depend
on the modulation format as well as on the
demodulation scheme used by the coherent
receiver.
1. BER in Synchronous ASK Receivers
Consider first the case of heterodyne detection,
 The phase generally varies randomly because of phase
fluctuations associated with the transmitter laser and the
local oscillator.
 The effect of phase fluctuations can be made negligible by
using semiconductor lasers whose linewidth is a small
fraction of the bit rate.
 Assuming this to be the case and setting  = 0
 Cont…………..
 BER can be expressed as follows

 where Q is factor which is the signal-to-noise ratio at

the decision circuit in voltage or current units, and is
typically expressed by:
 cont………

 For most coherent receivers whose noise is

dominated by the shot noise induced by local-
oscillator power and remains the same irrespective of
the received signal power.
The SNR of such receivers can be related to the number of
photons received during each 1 bit by the simple relation
SNR=2ηNp
The BER of ASK heterodyne can be written as follows
 Cont…….
 One can use the same method to calculate the BER in the
case of ASK homodyne receivers.

 However, the SNR is improved by 3 dB for the homodyne

case, so that SNR=4ηNp

 The above equations can be used to calculate the receiver

sensitivity at a specific BER. Similar to the direct-detection.
we can define the receiver sensitivity P¯rec as the average
received power required for realizing a BER of 10−9 or less.
 Cont……..
 BER = 10−9 when Q ≈ 6 or when SNR = 144 (21.6 dB).
 For the ASK heterodyne

 For the ASK homodyne case, P¯rec is smaller by a factor of 2

because of the 3-dB homodyne-detection advantage

Example, for a 1.55- µm ASK heterodyne receiver with η =

0.8 and ∆ f = 1 GHz, the receiver sensitivity is about 12 nW
and reduces to 6 nW if homodyne detection is used
 2. BER in Synchronous PSK Receivers

 Consider first the case of heterodyne detection. The signal at

the decision circuit is given by

 The main difference from the ASK case is that I p is constant,

but the phase φ takes values 0 or π depending on whether a 1
or 0 is transmitted.
 In both cases, I d is a Gaussian random variable but its
average value is either I p/2 or -Ip/2, depending on the
received bit.
 The situation is analogous to the ASK case with the
difference that I0 = -I1 in place of being zero.
Con….
 In Synchronous PSK Receivers the Q can be expressed as
factor

 where I0 = -I1 and σ0 = σ1 was used. By using

SNR = 2ηNp , the BER is given by

 As before, the SNR is improved by 3 dB, or by a factor of 2, in

the case of PSK homodyne detection, so that
Con……
• The receiver sensitivity at a BER of 10−9 can be obtained by
using Q = 6 .
• For the purpose of comparison, it is useful to express the
receiver sensitivity in terms of the number of photons N p.
• It is easy to verify that Np = 18 and 9 for the cases of
heterodyne and homodyne PSK detection, respectively.
• The average number of photons/bit, N¯ p, equals Np for the PSK
format because the same power is transmitted during 1 and 0
bits.
• A PSK homodyne receiver is the most sensitive receiver,
requiring only 9 photons/bit.
3. BER in Synchronous FSK Receivers
 Synchronous FSK receivers generally use a dual-filter
scheme. Each filter passes only 1 or 0 bits.
 The scheme is equivalent to two complementary ASK
heterodyne receivers operating in parallel.
 The SNR is improved by a factor of 2 compared with
the ASK case. the improvement is due to the fact that
whereas no power is received, on average, half the time
for ASK receivers,
 By using SNR = 4ηN p
Table. Sensitivity of synchronous receivers
 Con……

Figure : Bit-error-rate curves for various modulation formats. The solid

and dashed lines correspond to the cases of synchronous and asynchronous
demodulation, respectively.
 WDM
Dense wavelength division multiplexing
• It permits rapid network deployment and significant
network cost reduction.
• Use of DWDM allows deployment of less fiber and
hardware with more bandwidth being available relative to
standard SONET networks
 DWDM COMPONENT DEVELOPMENT
 A number of critical components are required for the realization of
DWDM communication systems. These include:
1. Sources with stable narrow band emission wavelengths
2. Tunable optical filters
3. ADD-Drop Filters
4. Broadband Optical Amplifiers
5. Optical Cross Connects
 In addition there are a number of important support components that also
must be developed. These include:
a. Optical Directional Couplers
b. Wavelength Filters
c. Optical isolators
d. Optical Equalizers
e. Polarizer's, rotators, circulators
f. Wavelength Inter leavers
 System and component development is focused on operation within two
low loss wavelength bands in silica fibers.
 These include the C and L- bands.
S-Band: (1480-1520 nm) C-Band: (1521-1560 nm)
L-Band: (1561-1620 nm)
Optical Network
 Figure 3 shows an optical network using DWDM techniques that consists
of five main components:
1. Transmitter (transmit transponder):
 Changes electrical bits to optical pulses
 Is frequency specific
 Uses a narrowband laser to generate the optical pulse
2. Multiplexer/Demultiplexer:
 Combines/separates discrete wavelengths
3. Amplifier:
 Pre-amplifier boosts signal pulses at the receive side
 Post-amplifier boosts signal pulses at the transmit side (post
amplifier)
 In line amplifiers (ILA) are placed at different distances from
the source to provide recovery of the signal before it is degraded
by loss.
 Con…..
Optical fiber (media):
- Transmission media to carry optical pulses
- Many different kinds of fiber are used
- Often deployed in sheaths of 144–256 fibers
5. Receiver (receive transponder)
- Changes optical pulses back to electrical bits
- Uses wideband laser to provide the optical pulse
 Reading assignment
• BER in Asynchronous receiver