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In this Letter, we present a fiber-optic radio frequency (RF) transmission scheme based on phase modulation with an interferometric detection structure. A self-developed Michelson interferometer (MI) is used to demodulate the frequency signal via an electrically controlled optical shifter. The two complementary outputs from the interferometer are detected using a balanced detector, which suppresses the common-mode noise of the fiber link. The structure is tested in the laboratory using a frequency transfer system over a 560 km fiber link. Experimental results show that a stable 2.4 GHz frequency transmission with a fractional frequency instability of 3.9 × 10 -14 at 1 s and 6.2 × 10 -17 at 10,000 s is achieved. Compared with the frequency transmission system based on intensity modulation and direct detection, the frequency instability is improved from 7.3 × 10 -14 to 3.9 × 10 -14 at 1 s. We believe that the proposed method will be useful for the construction of time-frequency synchronous fiber networks.

We demonstrate an optical fiber-based, multiple-access frequency transmission using two optical frequency combs. The experimental results using the Allan deviation analysis show that with the phase compensation technique, the frequency instabilities at the remote site are 8.7 × 10 -15 /1 s and 1.0 × 10 -17 /10 3 s, and at the accessing node along the fiber link, the frequency instabilities are 6.9 × 10 -15 /1 s and 1.1 × 10 -17 /10 3 s. Similarly, the power spectral density of phase noise was analyzed in the frequency domain. These experimental results demonstrate that the compensation scheme improved the performance by two to three orders of magnitude. Thus, the proposed frequency transmission technique has potential application for disseminating ultrastable frequency references in the optical fiber network.

The nonlinear evolution of ultrashort pulses in optical fiber has broad applications, but the computational burden of convolutional numerical solutions necessitates rapid modeling methods. Here, a lightweight convolutional neural network is designed to characterize nonlinear multi-pulse propagation in highly nonlinear fiber. With the proposed network, we achieve the forward mapping of multi-pulse propagation using the initial multi-pulse temporal profile as well as the inverse mapping of the initial multi-pulse based on the propagated multi-pulse with the coexistence of group velocity dispersion and self-phase modulation. A multi-pulse comprising various Gaussian pulses in 4-level pulse amplitude modulation is utilized to simulate the evolution of a complex random multi-pulse and investigate the prediction precision of two tasks. The results obtained from the unlearned testing sets demonstrate excellent generalization and prediction performance, with a maximum absolute error of 0.026 and 0.01 in the forward and inverse mapping, respectively. The approach provides considerable potential for modeling and predicting the evolution of an arbitrary complex multi-pulse.

A hybrid aperiodic-coded Brillouin optical correlation domain analysis (HA-coded BOCDA) fiber sensor is proposed to achieve long-range high-spatial-resolution distributed measurement. It is found that high-speed phase modulation in the BOCDA actually forms a special energy transformation mode. This mode can be exploited to suppress all detrimental effects parasitized in a pulse coding-induced cascaded stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) process and thereby enable the HA-coding to reach its full potential to improve the BOCDA performance. As a result, under a low system complexity and an enhanced measurement speed, a 72.65-km sensing range and a 5-cm spatial resolution are achieved with a temperature/strain measurement accuracy of 2℃/40 με.

A millimeter-wave (MMW) joint radar-communication (JRC) system with super-resolution is proposed and experimentally demonstrated, using optical heterodyne upconversion and self-coherent detection downconversion techniques. The point lies in the designed coherent dual-band constant envelope linear frequency modulation-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (LFM-OFDM) signal with opposite phase modulation indexes for the JRC system. Then the self-coherent detection, as a simple and low-cost means, is accordingly facilitated for both de-chirping of MMW radar and frequency downconversion reception of MMW communication, which circumvents costly high-speed mixers along with MMW local oscillators and, more significantly, achieves the real-time decomposition of radar and communication information. Furthermore, a super-resolution radar range profile is realized through the coherent fusion processing of dual-band JRC signals. In experiments, a dual-band LFM-OFDM JRC signal centered at 54 GHz and 61 GHz is generated. The two bands feature an identical instantaneous bandwidth of 2 GHz and carry an OFDM signal of 1 Gbaud, which helps to achieve a 6-Gbit/s data rate for communication and a 1.76-cm range resolution for radar.

Cluster synchronization in complex networks with mutually coupled semiconductor lasers (SLs) has recently been extensively studied. However, most of the previous works on cluster synchronization patterns have concentrated on undirected networks. Here, we numerically study the complete cluster synchronization patterns in directed networks composed of SLs, and demonstrate that the values of the SLs parameter and network parameter play a prominent role on the formation and stability of cluster synchronization patterns. Moreover, it is shown that there is a hierarchical dependency between the synchronization stability of different clusters in directed networks. The stability of one cluster can be affected by another cluster, but not vice versa. Without loss of generality, the results are validated in another SLs network with more complex topology.

A physics-based deep learning (DL) method termed Phynet is proposed for modeling the nonlinear pulse propagation in optical fibers totally independent of the ground truth. The presented Phynet is a combination of a handcrafted neural network and the nonlinear Schrödinger physics model. In particular, Phynet is optimized through physics loss generated by the interaction between the network and the physical model rather than the supervised loss. The inverse pulse propagation problem is leveraged to exemplify the performance of Phynet when in comparison to the typical DL method under the same structure and datasets. The results demonstrate that Phynet is able to precisely restore the initial pulse profiles with varied initial widths and powers, while revealing a similar prediction accuracy compared with the typical DL method. The proposed Phynet method can be expected to break the severe bottleneck of the traditional DL method in terms of relying on abundant labeled data during the training phase, which thus brings new insight for modeling and predicting the nonlinear dynamics of the fibers.

Chaotic optical communication technology is considered as an effective secure communication technology, which can protect information from a physical layer and is compatible with the existing optical networks. At present, to realize long-distance chaos synchronization is still a very difficult problem, mainly because well-matched hardware cannot always be guaranteed between the transmitter and receiver. In this Letter, we introduce long short-term memory (LSTM) networks to learn a nonlinear dynamics model of an opto-electronic feedback loop, and then apply the trained deep learning model to generate a chaotic waveform for encryption and decryption at the transmitter and receiver. Furthermore, to improve the security, we establish a deep learning model pool which consists of different gain trained models and different delay trained models, and use a digital signal to drive chaos synchronization between the receiver and transmitter. The proposed scheme is experimentally verified in chaotic-encrypted 56-Gbit/s PAM-4 systems, and a decrypted performance below 7%FEC threshold (BER = 3.8×10 -3 ) can be achieved over a 100-km fiber transmission.

An optical frequency comb (OFC)-assisted covert wireless communication system with multiple access and enhanced capacity is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. In the scheme, signals in multiple channels are spread and mixed together to use a single transmitter and then received by individual receivers according to multiple access channels. The mixed signal is highly contaminated by noise to achieve high concealment in both the time and frequency domains, and then effectively recovered as different channels using the OFC assisted analog deep denoising technique. In experiments, mixed signals of 16 access channels with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) from -18 to -5 dB are accommodated, showing high covertness and 16× capacity enhancement (16×10 Mbit/s). Mutual interference among different channels is also analyzed and greatly eliminated by phases optimization in the spectral-spreading process. This scheme can greatly improve the time and spectrum utilization efficiency, which will be of great significance for enabling multiple access, large capacity, and high security for wireless communications.

Camera calibration tends to suffer from the low-quality target image acquisition, which would yield inaccurate or inadequate extracted features, resulting in imprecise or even failed parameter estimation. To address this problem, this Letter proposes a novel deep-learning-based adaptive calibration method robust to defocus and noise, which could significantly enhance the image quality and effectively improve the calibration result. Our work provides a convenient multi-quality target dataset generation strategy and introduces a multi-scale deep learning framework that successfully recovers a sharp target image from a deteriorated one. Free from capturing additional patterns or using special calibration targets, the proposed method allows for a more reliable calibration based on the poor-quality acquired images. In this study, an initial training dataset can be easily established containing only 68 images captured by a smartphone. Based on the augmented dataset, the superior performance and flexible transferable ability of the proposed method are validated on another camera in the calibration experiments.

As a new, to the best of our knowledge, alternative to the saturated vapor-cell-based Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF), the FADOF based on a hollow cathode lamp (HCL-FADOF) not only enables the FADOF to work normally at room temperature without heating, but also has some new features due to the inherent characteristics of the HCL. In this Letter, we implement an HCL-FADOF operating on the rubidium D2 line and experimentally investigate the effect of ambient temperature on its performance and cold-start characteristics. Results show that the HCL-FADOF can provide excellent stability within a large temperature range, even at temperatures below 0°C. A comparison of the start performance between the HCL-FADOF and FADOF using saturated vapor cells is also provided. This work shows unique features of the HCL-FADOF in a low-temperature environment and its quick-start advantage, which provides a solid foundation for extensive applications.

In this Letter, a chirped-pulse conversion algorithm (CPCA) is proposed to convert a normal probe pulse into an equivalent chirped probe pulse by convolving a chirp factor on the received signal in coherent phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry ( Φ -OTDR). With this algorithm, the Rayleigh interference pattern (RIP) demodulation once applied to chirped-pulse Φ -OTDR can be adopted to quantify the dynamic strain in the traditional coherent Φ -OTDR. Since the equivalent chirped pulse is generated by digital processing, complex and costly chirp modulation is not required. The proposed scheme is capable of fully quantifying perturbations with spatial resolution of 4 m, a sensing range of 8 km, frequency response of 5 kHz, and strain resolution of 56 p ε/√ H z .

When the spatial frequencies of the object are insufficiently sampled, the reconstruction of ghost imaging will suffer from repetitive visual artifacts, which cannot be effectively tackled by existing ghost imaging reconstruction techniques. In this Letter, extensions of the CLEAN algorithm applied in ghost imaging are explored to eliminate those artifacts. Combined with the point spread function estimation using the second-order coherence measurement in ghost imaging, our modified CLEAN algorithm is demonstrated to have a fast and noteworthy improvement against the spatial-frequency insufficiency, even for the extreme sparse sampling cases. A brief explanation of the algorithm and performance analysis are given.

A photonic approach to generate switchable down-, up-, and dual-chirped linear frequency-modulated (LFM) microwave signals utilizing a dual-polarization dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DP-DPMZM) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. By properly controlling the radio frequency signals and baseband LFM signals applied to the DP-DPMZM, switchable down-, up-, and dual-chirped LFM microwave signals with a tunable center frequency and chirp rate can be obtained. Experimental results show that switchable down-, up-, and dual-chirped LFM signals with a center frequency of 5 GHz and chirp rate of 1 GHz/4 µs are generated. In addition, the tunability of the center frequency and chirp rate of the generated microwave signals are also demonstrated.

Herein, a novel material functionalization of fiber components is proposed, which is based on optically induced film forming. The film formation of polymer around a microfiber is achieved only by injecting an ultraviolet laser through the microfiber. The evanescent field of an ultraviolet laser, propagating along the microfiber surface, provides activation energy for photopolymerization of polymer and film formation directly onto the surface of a microfiber. The thickness of the deposited film can be controlled by adjusting the irradiation time. Additionally, the potential application case demonstrates that fiber components can be endowed with a given function by this material functionalization method. Therefore, a fiber relative humidity sensor using a polymer film-functionalized microfiber Bragg grating fabricated by this functionalization technique is demonstrated. This proposed sensor has the advantages of relatively fast response, large measurement range, and high stability.

Rather than the commonly used sparsity constraint, a new assumption taking advantage of regularity between rows or columns of a two-dimensional image is introduced to ghost imaging using compressive sensing, namely, low-rank constraint. Both simulation and experiment suggest explicit improvement on image quality of ghost imaging under low-rank constraint over ghost imaging under sparsity constraint (GISC), especially for under-sampling cases, and being in particular advantageous on image smoothness assessed by equivalent numbers of looks. Robustness of low-rank parameter setting is demonstrated. Low-rank constraint is also shown to be a powerful reference-less image quality enhancement tool for images restored by GISC.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel digital post-linearization algorithm for the mobile fronthaul system employing bandwidth-efficient multiple intermediate frequency-over-fiber technology and a low-cost directly-modulated laser (DML). The proposed linearization algorithm is distinguished for blind adaption, the absence of training signal, or prior knowledge of the transmission channel. Particularly, it provides a closed-form solution for the estimation of optimal linearizer coefficients, leading to a non-iterative mode without convergence restrictions. In our experiments, one and nine 200 MHz 64-QAM OFDM IF signals (or channels) are transmitted over a 10 km single-mode fiber link using a DML. In both cases (one and nine IF channels), the linearization performance of the proposed algorithm is experimentally validated in terms of the reduction (>8  dB) of the adjacent channel leakage ratio, decrease (>10  dB) of error vector magnitude (EVM), and an increase (>9  dB) of EVM-compliant input RF power range.

We have investigated the cluster isolated desynchronization, a symmetry-breaking state, in the delay-coupled vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) networks subject to variable-polarization optical feedback (VPOF). It is shown that, in the VPOF-VCSELs networks, the elusive isolated desynchronization phenomenon could emerge out of the cluster synchronization by the common-signal injection approach from an additional auxiliary VCSEL. The influences of parameters in VPOF-VCSELs networks on the existence and stability of isolated desynchronization are systematically investigated. Moreover, the generality of the proposed scheme is validated in the VPOF-VCSELs network with real-world network topology (Nepal power grid network). Our results offer a new insight to manage the synchronization patterns of a VCSELs network.

Previous studies of the Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF) mainly focus on the weak signal light filtering, without regard for the influences of the signal light intensity on the filter itself. However, in some applications the signal light is strong enough to change the filter's performance. In this work, the influences of the signal light intensity on the transmittance spectrum is experimentally investigated in a 780 nm Rb85 FADOF in both the line-center and wings operation modes. The results show that the transmittance spectrum varies significantly with the signal light intensity. As the signal light increases, some existing transmittance peaks decline, some new transmittance peaks appear, and the maximum transmittance peak frequency may change. The spectrum in strong signal lights can be quite different from those calculated by programs in the condition of weak signal lights. These results are important for applications of the FADOF in the condition of strong signal lights.

Radio frequency (RF) filtering switch is highly desired for signal routing or manipulation in the RF system. Based on the stimulated Brillouin scattering effect and the electro-optics Pockels effect, we propose a novel RF filtering switch with a high-frequency filtering precision and a fast switching speed. We have experimentally demonstrated the RF filtering with a high precision of ∼34  MHz, a wide operation bandwidth of ∼18  GHz, and the RF switching at a speed of <100  ps, which is hundreds of times faster than the traditional RF switch.

We propose a four-linear state of polarization multiplexed intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) scheme based on two orthogonal polarization division multiplexing (PDM) on-off keying systems. We also experimentally demonstrate a simple demultiplexing algorithm for this scheme by utilizing only a single Stokes analyzer. At the rate of 4×10  Gbit/s, the experimental results show that the power penalty of the proposed scheme is about 1.5 dB, compared to the single PDM-IM/DD for back-to-back (B2B) transmission. Compared to B2B, just about 1.7 dB power penalty is required after 25 km Corning LEAF optical fiber transmission. Meanwhile, the performance of the polarization tracking is evaluated, and the results show that the BER fluctuation is less than 0.5 dB with a polarization scrambling rate up to 708.75 deg/s.

We demonstrate a novel fiber tip Fabry-Perot (FP) interferometer with a chirped spectral characteristic. The FP interferometer is formed by an etched chirped fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and the fiber tip broadband end-face mirror, and the etched chirped FBG is prepared by a dynamic chemical etching process, shaping the taper and reducing the size from 125 μm to just a few micrometers. Due to the spectral characteristic of the etched chirped FBG, the different resonance wavelengths correspond to different gating positions which give rise to the gradient cavity length in the chirped fiber tip FP interferometer; thus, this FP interferometer possesses a chirped interference spectrum. Subsequently, the FP interferometer is fabricated, and the temperature response is investigated by measuring the wavelength shift of the resonance dips in the reflection spectrum. Significantly, because of its special interference principle and configuration, we experimentally demonstrate that this FP interferometer can be used for the spatial localization of the external temperature perturbations.

When the sampling data of ghost imaging are recorded with less bits, i.e., experiencing quantization, a decline in image quality is observed. The fewer bits that are used, the worse the image one gets. Dithering, which adds suitable random noise to the raw data before quantization, is proved to be capable of compensating image quality decline effectively, even for the extreme binary sampling case. A brief explanation and parameter optimization of dithering are given.

We report the fabrication of a novel high nonlinear fiber made of Ge-Sb-Se chalcogenide glasses with high numerical aperture (∼1.0), where the core and the cladding glasses consist of Ge 15 Sb 25 Se 60 and Ge 15 Sb 20 Se 65 (mol. %), respectively. The nonlinear refractive index (n 2 ) of the core glass is 19×10 -18   m 2 /W at 1.55 μm, and its laser-induced damage threshold under irradiation of 3.0 μm fs laser is approximately 3674  GW/cm 2 . By pumping a 20-cm-long fiber with a core diameter of 23 μm using 150 fs pulses at 6.0 μm, supercontinuum spanning from ∼1.8 to ∼14  μm was generated.

Polarization is one of the key parameters to be utilized for large capacity and high spectral-efficient optical communication systems, especially the widely deployed polarization-division-multiplexing (PDM) scheme. To break the limitation of only two orthogonal polarization states that could be used for carrying data signals over the same wavelength, we experimentally demonstrate the first transmission of three-polarization-division-multiplexed DPSK signals at a rate up to 3×25  Gb/s over 300-km fiber link by using a single-carrier.

We demonstrate an extended cavity Faraday laser system using an antireflection-coated laser diode as the gain medium and the isotope (87)Rb Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF) as the frequency selective device. Using this method, the laser wavelength works stably at the highest transmission peak of the isotope (87)Rb FADOF over the laser diode current from 55 to 140 mA and the temperature from 15°C to 35°C. Neither the current nor the temperature of the laser diode has significant influence on the output frequency. Compared with previous extended cavity laser systems operating at frequencies irrelevant to spectacular atomic transition lines, the laser system realized here provides a stable laser source with the frequency operating on atomic transitions for many practical applications.

An adaptive postprocessing approach to improve the linearity of the down-converted analog photonic link has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. With the inverse transformation for the detected signal, the third-order intermodulation distortion (IMD3) can be significantly suppressed when only the frequency and bandwidth of the signal are known. Experimental results show that the spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of the link can reach ∼126  dB·Hz(4/5) after the proposed compensation scheme.

A photonic approach for both wideband Doppler frequency shift (DFS) measurement and direction ambiguity resolution is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. In the proposed approach, a light wave from a laser diode is split into two paths. In one path, the DFS information is converted into an optical sideband close to the optical carrier by using two cascaded electro-optic modulators, while in the other path, the optical carrier is up-shifted by a specific value (e.g., from several MHz to hundreds of MHz) using an optical-frequency shift module. Then the optical signals from the two paths are combined and detected by a low-speed photodetector (PD), generating a low-frequency electronic signal. Through a subtraction between the specific optical frequency shift and the measured frequency of the low-frequency signal, the value of DFS is estimated from the derived absolute value, and the direction ambiguity is resolved from the derived sign (i.e., + or -). In the proof-of-concept experiments, DFSs from -90 to 90 kHz are successfully estimated for microwave signals at 10, 15, and 20 GHz, where the estimation errors are lower than ±60  Hz. The estimation errors can be further reduced via the use of a more stable optical frequency shift module.

A method to improve the linearity of the down-converted analog photonic link is proposed and experimentally demonstrated, consisting of two phase modulators, a polarizer, and an optical filter. Down-conversion of a 10-GHz microwave signal to 100-MHz intermediate frequency is successfully achieved. By carefully optimizing the angles between the transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic modes, the third-order inter-modulation distortion (IMD3) is suppressed. The linearization method leads to a suppression of the IMD3 by more than 14 and 13 dB improvement of spurious-free dynamic range.

The direct pump method now used in excited state Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filters (ES-FADOFs) requires that the transition between the target and the ground state is an electric dipole allowed transition and that a laser that operates at the exact pump wavelength is available. This is not always satisfied in practice. An indirect laser pump method for ES-FADOF is proposed and experimentally realized. Compared with the commonly used direct pump method, this indirect pump method can reach the same performance using lasers at very different wavelengths. This method can greatly extend the wavelength range of FADOF and provide a novel scheme for ES-FADOF design.

A method to improve the linearity of the analog photonic link is proposed and experimentally demonstrated, which consists of a phase modulator and an optical tunable bandpass filter. By carefully optimizing the bandwidth and center wavelength of the filter, we can significantly suppress the third-order intermodulation distortion by ~32 dB. Subsequently the spurious-free dynamic range of the link is improved by ~14 dB.

Polarization spectroscopy in (4)He around 1083 nm is observed and optimized with a distributed feedback fiber laser and is applied for frequency stabilization. In order to improve the accuracy and long-term stability of the frequency-locking performance, a power stabilization module is added, and the dependences of the peak-to-peak amplitude and frequency difference (width) of the polarization spectroscopy signal on various pump and probe powers are investigated.

A Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF) with a single transmission peak is achieved by using a buffer-gas (argon, 2 Torr)-filled rubidium cell. At room temperature, the transmission is 0.2% and the bandwidth of the transmission peak is 0.65 GHz. At a temperature of 63° C, the transmission rises to a maximum of 30.6%, with a bandwidth of 1.41 GHz. This FADOF may replace the use of interference filters or virtually imaged phased arrays in imaging modalities.

We propose and demonstrate a novel scheme of ultra-wideband (UWB) doublet pulse generation using a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) based polarization-diversified loop (PDL) without any assistant light. In our scheme, the incoming gaussian pulse is split into two parts by the PDL, and each of them is intensity modulated by the other due to cross-gain modulation (XGM) in the SOA. Then, both parts are recombined with incoherent summation to form a UWB doublet pulse. Bi-polar UWB doublet pulse generation is demonstrated using an inverted gaussian pulse injection. Moreover, pulse amplitude modulation of UWB doublet is also experimentally demonstrated. Our scheme shows some advantages, such as simple implementation without assistant light and single optical carrier operation with good fiber dispersion tolerance.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a photonic approach to the measurement of the time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) and the angle-of-arrival (AOA) of a microwave signal. In the proposed system, the TDOA and the AOA are equivalently converted into a phase shift between two replicas of a microwave signal received at two cascaded modulators. The light wave from a CW laser is externally modulated by the microwave signal at the first modulator, which is biased to suppress the optical carrier, leading to the generation of two first-order sidebands, which are further modulated by the phase-delayed microwave signal at the second modulator. Two optical components at the carrier wavelength are generated. The total power at the carrier wavelength is a function of the phase shift due to the coherent interference between the two components. Thus, by measuring the optical power, the phase shift is estimated. The AOA is calculated from the measured phase shifts. In our experiment, the phase shift of a microwave signal at 18 GHz from -160° to 40° is measured with measurement errors of less than ±2.5°.

The effects of unpredictability degree on the chaos synchronization properties of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with variable-polarization optical feedback are investigated numerically. For variable-polarization optical injection, only low-unpredictability chaos can be well synchronized, while high-unpredictability chaos cannot be synchronized even with large injection strength. On the other hand, for the polarization-preserved optical injection, the synchronization quality is hardly affected by the unpredictability degree, and high-quality synchronization can be achieved for both low- and high-unpredictability chaos due to injection locking.

We numerically analyze the effect of an injection current on the synchronization and communication features of two chaotic external cavity semiconductor lasers in a closed-loop configuration. The simulation results demonstrate that, by moderately increasing the injection current, the efficient bandwidth of the chaotic carrier would be broadened, high quality chaos synchronization can be preserved, and the communication performance can be enhanced., (© 2011 Optical Society of America)

An all-fiber approach to generate triangular-shaped pulses based on frequency-to-time conversion is proposed and demonstrated. Two filter modules that have sinusoidal spectral responses are cascaded to create a triangular-shaped optical spectrum. Through the frequency-to-time conversion in a dispersive fiber, periodic triangular pulses with the same shape as the optical spectrum are obtained. The repetition rate and pulse width of the generated signals can be tuned by adjusting the modulation rate and the dispersion value, respectively.

The chaotic unpredictability of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) with polarization-rotated optical feedback is evaluated quantitatively via the normalized permutation entropy H. The effect of polarization mode competition (PMC) is explored. For weak PMC, the H for X-polarization mode, Y-polarization mode, and total output are close to each other, while for strong PMC, the H for the total output is the highest one, which indicates that the permutation entropy is an effective tool for quantifying chaotic unpredictability of VCSELs and provides valuable information for choosing the proper chaotic carrier.

A full-scale phase demodulation approach based on two quadrature power ratios is proposed to perform photonic instantaneous frequency measurement (P-IFM). In the proposed approach, a delay-line interferometer (DLI) and two laser sources are used. The wavelengths of two lasers are located at the peak point of and at the -3 dB point of the comb filtering response of the DLI. Therefore, at the two wavelengths, a cosine-shape and a sine-shape filtering response are formed to process the +1st or -1st order sidebands, which are generated by externally modulating the light waves of the two lasers with a microwave signal. After being filtered, two quadrature power ratios, cosine-shaped and sine-shaped responses, are obtained at the two wavelengths via power detection and power comparison. The phase term induced by the frequency is then demodulated from the two power ratios without ambiguity within the full-scale range of 0-2pi, the so-called full-scale phase demodulation, which has been verified in a proof-of-concept experiment. Unlike a half-scale range of 0-pi, such a full-scale range of the proposed approach makes it a potential solution to design parallel or cascaded configurations to P-IFM to enhance the measurement range and the resolution.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate an all-fiber-based approach to generate microwave signals with tunable frequency and pulse width. The adjustable optical power spectrum can be achieved using a spectrum shaper, consisting of a variable differential-group-delay element and a bandwidth-tunable optical filter. Through the frequency-to-time conversion in the dispersive fiber, the frequency and pulse width of the obtained microwave signals can be user defined by modifying the optical spectrum shape.

We restudy the influence of beam wander on the uplink of ground-to-satellite laser communication, using the effective pointing error method, for a collimated untracked Gaussian beam under a weak atmospheric turbulence condition. It shows that the beam wander may cause significant increase in bit error rate (BER), and there exists an optimal transmitter radius for minimizing the value of BER. Further studies manifest that this optimal radius only changes with the laser wavelength and zenith angle, while independent on the satellite altitude and the fade threshold at the receiver. These results can be used in system design and optimization for the transmitter.