Short Courses

The ever-increasing traffic demands in carrier networks, driven by emerging data-centric services and applications, have led to intense research and development in the area of high-capacity (several 10 Tbit/s), high-speed (up to 400 Gb/s per wavelength) optical transport networks. In order to enable such high capacities and speeds over appreciable transmission distances (>1000 km), spectrally efficient yet impairment-tolerant transmission technologies have moved into the focus of optical communications research and have led to considerable innovation in modulation and detection strategies. This course gives an overview of modulation formats and multiplexing techniques for optical networking applications, both from a conceptually fundamental and from a state-of-the-art technological point of view. The discussed modulation formats include intensity modulation, phase modulation, and quadrature amplitude modulation; multiplexing techniques include wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), polarization division multiplexing (PDM), subcarrier multiplexing, discrete multi-tone (DMT), and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), and also an introduction to space division multiplexing (SDM) as the currently emerging research frontier, heavily discussed throughout the conference sessions. The course covers optical receiver design and optimization principles, both for direct-detection and digital coherent (intradyne) receivers, including some basic discussion of the underlying digital electronic signal processing (DSP) at both the receiver and the transmitter, as well as some fundamentals of error correcting coding techniques from a systems perspective. Finally, the course highlights the interplay of modulation format, receiver design, and the wide variety of transmission impairments found in optically routed long-haul networks and points to latest research trends in optical modulation and multiplexing.

This course should enable you to:

• Describe the basic concepts behind optical modulation and multiplexing techniques.

• Explain the basic concepts behind advanced optical modulation formats, their performance, and their generation using state-of-the-art opto-electronic components and digital signal processing.

• Explain the basic concepts of optical receiver design, including direct and coherent detec¬tion as well as related digital signal processing techniques.

• Recognize and discuss the interplay between modulation format, transceiver design, and transmission impairments.

• Get an insight into future trends in research and product commercialization of optical transport systems enabled by advanced modulation and multiplexing techniques, software-defined transceivers, and flexible WDM architectures.

This advanced-beginner course is intended for a diverse audience including lightwave system researchers and engineers as well as opto-electronic subsystem designers. Some basic knowledge of optical modulation and detection technologies will help in better understanding the course but is not a prerequisite. Past attendees will find substantial updates to this course, which we continuously adapt to reflect the latest trends in research as well as in product development, and may hence find it useful to attend again.

Peter J. Winzer received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, in 1998. At Bell Labs since 2000, he headed the Optical Transmission Research Department up until 2020 and worked on multiple aspects of fiber-optic communication systems, advanced modulation, multiplexing schemes, receiver concepts, and digital signal processing. He contributed to many high-speed and high-capacity optical communications records and has been actively promoting spatial multiplexing to scale optical transport systems. Dr. Winzer served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology from 2013 to 2018, was Program Chair of ECOC 2009, and Program/General Chair of OFC 2015/2017. He is a Bell Labs Fellow, a Fellow of the IEEE and the OSA, and a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering. He holds an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Eindhoven.
 
Xi Chen received her B.E. degree in Telecommunication Engineering from the National University of Defense Technology, China, in 2008, and her Ph.D. degree from The University of Melbourne, Australia, in 2012. She worked in Huawei’s Wireless Networking department in 2008, and from 2013 to 2015 was a Research Fellow in The University of Melbourne, conducting research on optical fiber transmission. Dr. Chen was awarded a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award in 2015, from the Australian Research Council. Since 2015, she has been with Nokia Bell Labs and her current research interests include advanced digital signal processing for high speed optical subsystems and fiber transmission.