Search

Abstract This study showcases a method for achieving high-performance yellow and red micro-LEDs through precise control of indium content within quantum wells. By employing a hybrid quantum well structure with our six core technologies, we can accomplish outstanding external quantum efficiency (EQE) and robust stripe bandwidth. The resulting 30 μm × 8 micro-LED arrays exhibit maximum EQE values of 11.56% and 5.47% for yellow and red variants, respectively. Notably, the yellow micro-LED arrays achieve data rates exceeding 1 Gbit/s for non-return-to-zero on–off keying (NRZ-OOK) format and 1.5 Gbit/s for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) format. These findings underscore the significant potential of long-wavelength InGaN-based micro-LEDs, positioning them as highly promising candidates for both full-color microdisplays and visible light communication applications.

Herein, a lucid meta-holographic approach leveraging geometric phase metasurfaces and photonic crystal surface-emitting lasers is presented. Such a straightforward technique inherently enables polarized structured light projection with opposite circular polarization states, effectively doubling the field of view for depth sensing applications. Furthermore, the innate polarization state of projected light provides enhanced resistance to environmental interference. To demonstrate the practical utility of this method, an integrated depth sensing system based on the geometric phase meta-hologram has been developed and successfully detects targets at an operating distance of 75 cm, paving the way for advanced 3D sensing applications in various fields.

To achieve higher visible light communication (VLC) traffic capacity, using the wide bandwidth light-emitting diode (LED) and spectral efficiency modulation signal, is currently the most commonly used method. In this demonstration, we apply the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing quadrature amplitude modulation (OFDM-QAM) with bit- and power-loading algorithm on single blue LED to achieve >1 Gbit/s VLC capacity, when a 400 MHz bandwidth avalanche photodiode (APD)-based receiver (Rx) is exploited for decoding. Here, the higher sensitivity APD can be applied to compensate for the wireless VLC link length in the proposed LED VLC system, and due to the lower LED illumination (255 to 40 lux), is used for the indoor access network after passing the wireless link length of 1 to 4 m. As a result, using single blue LED can achieve 0.962 to 1.057 Gbit/s OFDM rate with available 400 MHz bandwidth APD in poorly illuminated condition indoors without applying analogy equalization.

Abstract Free-space optical communications hold promising advantages, including a large bandwidth, access to license-free spectrum, high data rates, quick and simple deployment, low power consumption, and relaxed quality requirements. Nevertheless, key technical challenges remain, such as a higher transmission efficiency, a lower transmission loss, and a smaller form factor of optical systems. Here, we demonstrate the viability of circular-polarization-multiplexed multi-channel optical communication using metasurfaces alongside a photonic-crystal surface-emitting laser (PCSEL) light source at wavelength of 940 nm. Through the light manipulation with metasurface, we split the linearly polarized incidence into left and right circular polarizations with desired diffraction angles. Such orthogonal polarization states provide a paradigm of polarization division multiplexing technique for light communication. The PCSEL light source maintains a low divergence angle of about 0.373 degrees after passing through an ultra-thin metasurface without further bulky collimator or light guide, making end-to-end (E2E) and device-to-device (D2D) communications available in a compact form. Both light source and modulated polarized light exhibit a − 3 dB bandwidth over 500 MHz, with successful 1 Gbit/s transmission demonstrated in eye diagrams. Our results affirm that metasurface effectively boosts transmission capacity without compromising the light source's inherent properties. Future metasurface designs could expand channel capacity, and its integration with PCSEL monolithically holds promise for reducing interface losses, thereby enhancing efficiency.

Nowadays, a variety of underwater activities, such as underwater surveillance, marine monitoring, etc., are becoming crucial worldwide. Underwater sensors and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are widely adopted for underwater exploration. Underwater communication via radio frequency (RF) or acoustic wave suffers high transmission loss and limited bandwidth. In this work, we present and demonstrate a rolling shutter (RS)-based underwater optical camera communication (UWOCC) system utilizing a long short-term memory neural network (LSTM-NN) with side glow optical fiber (SGOF). SGOF is made of poly-methyl methacrylate (PMMA) SGOF. It is lightweight and flexibly bendable. Most importantly, SGOF is water resistant; hence, it can be installed in an underwater environment to provide 360° “omni-directional” uniform radial light emission around its circumference. This large FOV can fascinate the optical detection in underwater turbulent environments. The proposed LSTM-NN has the time-memorizing characteristics to enhance UWOCC signal decoding. The proposed LSTM-NN is also compared with other decoding methods in the literature, such as the PPB-NN. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed LSTM-NN outperforms the PPB-NN in the UWOCC system. A data rate of 2.7 kbit/s can be achieved in UWOCC, satisfying the pre-forward error correction (FEC) condition (i.e., bit error rate, BER ≤ 3.8 × 10−3). We also found that thin fiber also allows performing spatial multiplexing to enhance transmission capacity.

New applications such as augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), Internet-of-Things (IOT), autonomous mobile robot (AMR) services, etc., require high reliability and high accuracy real-time positioning and tracking of persons and devices in indoor areas. Among the different visible-light-positioning (VLP) schemes, such as proximity, time-of-arrival (TOA), time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA), angle-of-arrival (AOA), and received-signal-strength (RSS), the RSS scheme is relatively easy to implement. Among these VLP methods, the RSS method is simple and efficient. As the received optical power has an inverse relationship with the distance between the LED transmitter (Tx) and the photodiode (PD) receiver (Rx), position information can be estimated by studying the received optical power from different Txs. In this work, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a real-time VLP system utilizing long short-term memory neural network (LSTM-NN) with principal component analysis (PCA) to mitigate high positioning error, particularly at the positioning unit cell boundaries. Experimental results show that in a positioning unit cell of 100 × 100 × 250 cm3, the average positioning error is 5.912 cm when using LSTM-NN only. By utilizing the PCA, we can observe that the positioning accuracy can be significantly enhanced to 1.806 cm, particularly at the unit cell boundaries and cell corners, showing a positioning error reduction of 69.45%. In the cumulative distribution function (CDF) measurements, when using only the LSTM-NN model, the positioning error of 95% of the experimental data is >15 cm; while using the LSTM-NN with PCA model, the error is reduced to

In this demonstration, we present two erbium-doped fiber (EDF) lasers, with series and parallel three sub-ring configurations, respectively, to achieve tunable channel output and stable single longitudinal mode (SLM) operation in the L-band range. Here, the fiber ring cavity contains the L-band EDF as a gain medium. Based on the measured results of the two quad-ring structures of the EDF lasers, tunable output bandwidth for the two lasers can be obtained from 1558.0 to 1618.0 nm simultaneously. All the 3 dB linewidths measured for both fiber lasers are 312.5 Hz over the effective wavelength output range. Furthermore, the related optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR), output power, output stabilities of the central wavelength and power, and equal output power range of the two proposed EDF lasers are also examined and discussed.

Abstract In this study, we have demonstrated the potential of InGaN-based red micro-LEDs with single quantum well (SQW) structure for visible light communication applications. Our findings indicate the SQW sample has a better crystal quality, with high-purity emission, a narrower full width at half maximum, and higher internal quantum efficiency, compared to InGaN red micro-LED with a double quantum wells (DQWs) structure. The InGaN red micro-LED with SQW structure exhibits a higher maximum external quantum efficiency of 5.95% and experiences less blueshift as the current density increases when compared to the DQWs device. Furthermore, the SQW device has a superior modulation bandwidth of 424 MHz with a data transmission rate of 800 Mbit/s at an injection current density of 2000 A/cm2. These results demonstrate that InGaN-based SQW red micro-LEDs hold great promise for realizing full-color micro-display and visible light communication applications.

Compact photonic devices that integrate metasurfaces with light sources have been widely studied. However, experimental demonstrations of a higher efficiency of integration are still lacking. To enhance the efficiency of light sources integrated with metasurfaces, we employed a forward design optimization method and index matching between the light source and metasurface substrate to design metagratings. To optimize the overall diffraction efficiency, we manipulated the degrees of freedom in phase, the lattice constants, and the number of unit cells. The same material was utilized for the nanostructures and substrate (homo-metagrating) for index matching, while Si and GaAs materials were used for working at 1550 and 940 nm, respectively. The experimental homo-metagratings operating at 1550 nm and made of Si exhibited an overall average efficiency of 51.3% at diffraction angles of 60.3°. On the other hand, experimental homo-metagratings operating at 940 nm and made of GaAs exhibited an overall average efficiency of 52.4% at diffraction angles of 49.3°. This suggests that the future integration of metagratings with a polarization-specific laser can further enhance the overall diffraction efficiency.

We propose and demonstrate a Mach–Zehnder Interferometer (MZI)-based optical neural network (ONN) to classify and regenerate a four-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM4) signal with high inter-symbol interference (ISI) generated experimentally by a silicon microing modulator (SiMRM). The proposed ONN has a multiple MZI configuration achieving a transmission matrix that resembles a fully connected (FC) layer in a neural network. The PAM4 signals at data rates from 160 Gbit/s to 240 Gbit/s (i.e., 80 GBaud to 120 GBaud) were experimentally generated by a SiMRM. As the SiMRM has a limited 3-dB modulation bandwidth of ~67 GHz, the generated PAM4 optical signal suffers from severe ISI. The results show that soft-decision (SD) forward-error-correction (FEC) requirement (i.e., bit error rate, BER < 2.4 × 10−2) can be achieved at 200 Gbit/s transmission, and the proposed ONN has nearly the same performance as an artificial neural network (ANN) implemented using traditional computer simulation.

We put forward and demonstrate a steerable optical beam visible light communication (VLC) system combining orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) schemes, and utilizing a spatial light modulator (SLM)-based reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) for beam steering. When utilizing the SLM as RIS for optical beam steering, its operation principle, maximum achievable steering angle (i.e., field-of-view, FOV), as well as the corresponding loss should be analyzed. We theoretically and experimentally analyzed in detail the characters of SLM when acting as the RIS. Experimental results demonstrate the flexibility of both active beam control and data rate allocation for multiple users. The SLM-based RIS can independently and simultaneously control multiple beams, and significantly reduce the deploying cost of the increase in the devices for the multi-beam handling scenario. All of the specified channels under evaluation satisfy the pre-forward error correction bit-error rate limit (pre-FEC BER = 3.8 × 10−3).

We propose a highly polarized vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) consisting of staggered InGaN multiple quantum wells (MQWs), with the resonance cavity and polarization enabled by a bottom nanoporous (NP) n-GaN distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs), and top TiO2 high-index contrast gratings (HCGs). Optoelectronic simulations of the 612 nm VCSEL were systematically and numerically investigated. First, we investigated the influences of the NP DBR and HCG geometries on the optical reflectivity. Our results indicate that when there are more than 17 pairs of NP GaN DBRs with 60% air voids, the reflectance can be higher than 99.7%. Furthermore, the zeroth-order reflectivity decreases rapidly when the HCG’s period exceeds 518 nm. The optimal ratios of width-to-period (52.86 ± 1.5%) and height-to-period (35.35 ± 0.14%) were identified. The staggered MQW design also resulted in a relatively small blue shift of 5.44 nm in the emission wavelength under a high driving current. Lastly, we investigated the cavity mode wavelength and optical threshold gain of the VCSEL with a finite size of HCG. A large threshold gain difference of approximately 67.4–74% between the 0th and 1st order transverse modes can be obtained. The simulation results in this work provide a guideline for designing red VCSELs with high brightness and efficiency.

Over the past few decades, on-chip photonic integrated circuits based on silicon photonics (SiPh) platforms have gained widespread attention due to the fact that they offer many advantages, such as high bandwidth, low loss, compact size, low power consumption, and high integration with different photonic devices. The demand for high-speed and high-performance SiPh devices is driven by the significant increase in demand for Internet traffic. In photonic integrated circuits, controlling optical signals to make them circulate in a specific direction is a highly researched area of study. However, achieving a purely passive on-chip optical circulating network on a SiPh platform is very challenging. Therefore, we propose and demonstrate, through simulations, an on-chip optical circulator network on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. The proposed device can also support mode conversion. The proposed on-chip optical circulating network consists of two kinds of tailor-made multi-mode interferometer (MMI) structures and waveguide crossings. Through the optical power division and mode combination capabilities of the MMI, an optical circulating network supporting high optical isolation and mode conversion is achieved. The proposed optical circulating network has a loss of 1.5 dB at each output port, while maintaining a high isolation of 35 dB in the transmission window from 1530 nm to 1570 nm.

In this paper, a wavelength-selectable erbium-doped fiber (EDF) laser in L-band bandwidth with a simple structure and low cost is described. To obtain stable single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) and narrow laser linewidth, the 2 m unpumped EDF-based saturable absorber (SA) and 100 m single-mode fiber (SMF)-induced Rayleigh backscattering (RB) injection effect are cascaded in the ring cavity of the fiber laser. The EDF SA and feedback RB injection can cause the auto-tracking ultra-narrow bandwidth filter effect to suppress the multiple longitudinal mode oscillations and narrow the laser linewidth. Thus, the tunable SLM wavelength output of the EDF laser with sub-kHz linewidth can be achieved. In the measurement, two EDF ring lasers can be executed when the placement of EDF-based SA and SMF-induced RB are switched to experiment with different output characteristics. The experimental results show that the wavelength bandwidths of the two lasers are between 1558.0 and 1618.0 nm. Additionally, the optimal optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR), wavelength linewidth, output power, and stability of the presented EDF laser configuration are also achieved and discussed.

In the paper, a hybrid Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and Rayleigh backscattering (RB) injection is designed and applied in the erbium-doped fiber (EDF) ring laser configuration. The MZI scheme and RB-induced signal can accomplish the single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) oscillation and narrow the linewidth to kHz target for each generated wavelength over the available wavelength-tuning bandwidth. In the measurement, the output power, optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) and wavelength linewidth of the designed fiber laser are also executed and discussed.

We put forward and provide the first illustration of a high capacity and high spectral efficient free space optical communication (FSOC) system using digital domain power division multiplexing orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexed (DDPD-O-OFDM) signal utilizing 10-GHz class optical components. In the proof-of-concept demonstration, a data rate of 2 × 30.8 Gbit/s can be achieved for each polarization multiplexed wavelength channel, fulfilling the pre-forward-error-correction bit-error-ratio (pre-FEC BER = 3.8 × 10−3). By employing the DDPD-O-OFDM here, the FSOC per channel capacity can be enhanced not only allowing the spectral overlapping of different orthogonal subcarriers, as in the case of OFDM; but also allowing channel multiplexing in the power domain to increase the spectral efficiency. The principle of DDPD-O-OFDM is discussed; and BER and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of different DDPD channels are experimentally measured.

We propose to utilize a commercially available DIALux lighting design software for simulation and planning of machine learning (ML) based angle-of-arrival (AOA) visible light positioning (VLP) systems. Here, different ML models, for example, second order linear regression (LR), artificial neural-network (ANN), and convolutional neural-network (CNN) are employed. The proposed VLP simulator works well with different ML algorithms. The results show that the proposed scheme can acts as an effective indoor VLP planning and design tool. Besides, it may also alleviate the training data collection in ML based VLP systems.

To avoid the fault occurrence of fiber link, a simple self-restored wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON) is presented. In the demonstration, the additional optical components are included in the optical line terminal (OLT), remote node (RN) and optical network unit (ONU) to produce the alternative fiber path for fault protection. Here, 10 Gb/s on-off keying (OOK) downstream and upstream wavelengths are exploited to measure the bit error rate (BER) performances at the back-to-back (B2B) and through 50 to 51 km fiber transmission, respectively. Moreover, all the modulation signals can achieve enough power budget under the forward error correction (FEC) level to meet with the total insertion loss caused by the various fiber links and additional devices.

In this paper, an erbium-doped fiber (EDF) octa-ring laser system with continuous-wave (CW) tunability and stable single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) output is presented and investigated. The octa-ring configuration can cause a mode-filter operation based on the Vernier effect for dense side-mode suppression and gain extension. Therefore, the available wavelength-tuning bandwidth of the laser can be achieved from 1519.0 to 1575.0 nm by utilizing conventional C-band EDF based gain-medium. Moreover, the output power, output stability, optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) and laser linewidth of the demonstrated EDF laser are also executed and discussed.

Inthe work, we study and express a new wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON) architecture with fiber fault protection. The designed optical network unit (ONU) module and periodic spectrum of 2 × N array waveguide grating (AWG) are applied to produce the self-protected mechanism. Here, we employ the free space optical communication (FSO)- and fiber-based connection between two adjacent ONUs to achieve signal relink. Moreover, the corresponding signal performances of downstream and upstream are also analyzed and discussed.

We put forward and demonstrate a silicon photonics (SiPh)-based mode division multiplexed (MDM) optical power splitter that supports transverse-electric (TE) single-mode, dual-mode, and triple-mode (i.e., TE0, TE1, and TE2). An optical power splitter is needed for optical signal distribution and routing in optical interconnects. However, a traditional optical splitter only divides the power of the input optical signal. This means the same data information is received at all the output ports of the optical splitter. The powers at different output ports may change depending on the splitting ratio of the optical splitter. The main contributions of our proposed optical splitter are: (i) Different data information is received at different output ports of the optical splitter via the utilization of NOMA. By adjusting the power ratios of different channels in the digital domain (i.e., via software control) at the Tx, different channel data information can be received at different output ports of the splitter. It can increase the flexibility of optical signal distribution and routing. (ii) Besides, the proposed optical splitter can support the fundamental TE0 mode and the higher modes TE1, TE2, etc. Supporting mode-division multiplexing and multi-mode operation are important for future optical interconnects since the number of port counts is limited by the chip size. This can significantly increase the capacity besides wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and spatial division multiplexing (SDM). The integrated SiPh MDM optical power splitter consists of a mode up-conversion section implemented by asymmetric directional couplers (ADCs) and a Y-branch structure for MDM power distribution. Here, we also propose and discuss the use of the Genetic algorithm (GA) for the MDM optical power splitter parameter optimization. Finally, to provide adjustable data rates at different output ports after the MDM optical power splitter, non-orthogonal multiple access—orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (NOMA-OFDM) is also employed. Experimental results validate that, in three modes (TE0, TE1, and TE2), user-1 and user-2 achieve data rates of (user-1: greater than 22 Gbit/s; user-2: greater than 12 Gbit/s) and (user-1: greater than 12 Gbit/s; user-2: 24 Gbit/s), respectively, at power-ratio (PR) = 2.0 or 3.0. Each channel meets the hard-decision forward-error-correction (HD-FEC, i.e., BER = 3.8 × 10−3) threshold. The proposed method allows flexible data rate allocation for multiple users for optical interconnects and system-on-chip networks.

To increase the optical interconnect transmission capacity, different multiplexing technologies, including wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), polarization division multiplexing (PolDM) and mode division multiplexing (MDM), can be utilized. Among them, MDM is a promising technique in silicon photonics (SiPh) integrated optical interconnects since higher order modes can be easily generated and preserved in SiPh waveguides. In this work, we propose and demonstrate the designs of SiPh-based bulk zigzag and sinusoidal structured MDM mode conversion devices using genetic algorithm (GA) optimization. A traditional periodic zigzag structured mode converter design has many sharp zigzag angles in the periodic structure, which are very sensitive to the fabrication error. Here, first of all, we propose and demonstrate a bulk zigzag structure to achieve MDM mode conversion. The proposed bulk zigzag structure can reduce the zigzag angle error as a large number of zigzag angles in the periodic structure are eliminated. Moreover, we further improve our device by proposing a bulk sinusoidal structure to further eliminate the zigzag angle. Results show that both the proposed bulk zigzag and sinusoidal MDM mode converters can still maintain high transmissions of >86%, while the mode conversion lengths of both devices can be significantly reduced by >60% in the C-band wavelength window. In addition, as there are many degrees of freedom (DOFs) during the design of the SiPh mode converter, including the waveguide width, length, period, zigzag angle, etch depth, duty cycle, etc., the GA optimization algorithm is employed. Here, detailed implementation of the GA optimization is discussed.

In this work, we put forward and demonstrate a bi-direction free-space visible light communication (VLC) system supporting multiple moveable receivers (Rxs) using a light-diffusing optical fiber (LDOF). The downlink (DL) signal is launched from a head-end or central office (CO) far away to the LDOF at the client side via a free-space transmission. When the DL signal is launched to the LDOF, which acts as an optical antenna to re-transmit the DL signal to different moveable Rxs. The uplink (UL) signal is sent via the LDOF towards the CO. In a proof-of-concept demonstration, the LDOF is 100 cm long, and the free space VLC transmission between the CO and the LDOF is 100 cm. 210 Mbit/s DL and 850 Mbit/s UL transmissions meet the pre-forward-error-correction bit error rate (pre-FEC BER = 3.8 × 10−3) threshold.

We propose and demonstrate a 100 Gbit/s silicon photonic (SiPh) coherent receiver (Rx) with advanced digital signal processing (DSP) for dual-polarization quadrature-phase-shift-keying (DP-QPSK) transmission. It employs integrated 2D polarization-splitting grating couplers (2D-GCs), modified hybrid mixers and high speed silicon-germanium (SiGe) photodiodes (PDs). The 2D-GC replaced the polarization beam splitters and rotators needed in traditional coherent Rx. Moreover, the SiGe PD has the bandwidth >50 GHz.

In this study, a symmetric polarization-division-multiplexing (PDM) wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON) with fiber to the extension (FTTE) architecture is presented and investigated. The proposed PON can also avoid the Rayleigh backscattering (RB) interference noise. Here, each WDM wavelength can produce 25 Gbit/s on-off keying (OOK) and 10 Gbit/s OOK modulation channels simultaneously in x- and y-polarizations (Polx and Poly) through PDM method for 25 and 105 km single-mode fiber (SMF) transmissions without dispersion compensation. The measured minimal power budget of 25 and 10 Gbit/s downstream and upstream signals are 29 and 35.1 dB and 29.8 and 31.5 dB, respectively, at the forward error correction (FEC) target. Therefore, the proposed PDM WDM-PON architecture can not only offer symmetric 35 Gbit/s downstream and upstream connections by the dual-polarized wavelength, but also can avoid the RB-induced interference noise. In addition, the presented dual-polarized downstream signal also can provide information security in physical layer, when the unauthorized user occupies unlawfully.

In this work, we demonstrate a symmetry 28 Gbps/ $\lambda $ on-off keying (OOK) wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON) architecture together with confidential connection between two specific optical network units (ONUs). The presented PON access network also can prevent the Rayleigh backscattering (RB) induced interference noise. Here, to avoid re-deployment of optical fiber and increase cost, a ring-based fiber connection is proposed to connect each ONU for personal information link, when the data connection between two ONUs can be changed arbitrarily. Moreover, the corresponding signal performances of the presented WDM-PON system are also studied and discussed.

We put forward and demonstrate a angle-of-arrival (AOA) based visible-light-positioning (VLP) system using quadrant-solar-cell (QSC) and third-order ridge regression machine learning (RRML) to improve the positioning accuracy.

We put forward and experimentally demonstrate a second order machine-learning (ML) based visible-light-positioning (VLP) system using simple linear interpolation algorithm to reduce the training samples required in the ML algorithm. Algorithms of the second order regression ML model using 2,430 training samples; and using the reduced training samples of 570 with and without the proposed linear interpolation are compared and discussed. We can observe that the positioning accuracy of using training samples of 570 with the proposed interpolation can have similar performance when compared with using 2,430 training samples. The training samples are reduced by ~76.5%. Here, off-the-shelf LED lamps and low bandwidth electrical and optical components are employed; and the system is cost-effective. Good quality on-off keying (OOK) identifier (ID) signals are retrieved after frequency down-conversion from 20 kHz, 40 kHz and 60 kHz without and with optical background noises respectively.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) visible light communication (VLC) system using non-Hermitian symmetry (NHS) inverse-fast-Fourier-transform (IFFT)/FFT size efficient (SE) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). Fix power allocation and successive interference cancellation (SIC) algorithms are realized. The power ratio between different users, transmission distance, network cell coverage are investigated. The proposed scheme is also compared with the HS based direct-current optical (DCO)-OFDM NOMA-VLC system.

In this paper, we present experimentally an erbium-doped fiber (EDF) laser system to accomplish the single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) and wavelength-upconverted output by using nonlinear effect. To accomplish the SLM output, a short length of unpumped EDF saturable absorber (SA) is applied inside the EDF laser cavity for filtering densely multi-mode noise. In accordance with the designed EDF laser system, the lasing wavelength can be upconverted to a longer wavelength position. In addition, the output characteristics of output power, optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR), tunability, stability and linewidth in the EDF laser are also discussed.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a color-shift-keying embedded direct-current-optical-orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing (CSK-DCO-OFDM) scheme for the VLC systems. The proposed scheme can provide not only non-flickering aggregated optical power to reduce human health concerns, but also offers additional modulation dimension or flexibility to the CSK by including high data rate OFDM signal. The data rate is increased from 10 Mbit/s in the original CSK signal to 70.43 Mbit/s in the CSK-DCO-OFDM signal, and both the CSK and OFDM signals satisfy the forward-error-correction (FEC) threshold.

In this research, we present and study an erbium fiber laser with triple-fiber-ring (TFR) scheme for continuous-wave (CW) wavelength-selection. The designed TFR not only can achieve single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) oscillation, but also can spread the tuning range from 1519.0 to 1583.0 nm covering C- and part of L-bands. Moreover, 0 dB power fluctuation can be obtained from 1523.0 nm to 1559.0 nm for flattened operation based on the compound-ring configuration. The Lorentzian laser linewidths of 22 to 29 kHz are also attained in the entire wavelength-tunable range.

In the paper, we present and investigate an integrated wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) free space optical (FSO) fiber access network for 51 km long-reach connection. Here, the proposed network architecture also can mitigate Rayleigh backscattering (RB) interferometric beat noise. We employ symmetric 4 × 10 Gbit/s on-off keying (OOK) WDM-FSO downstream and upstream wavelengths for demonstration. According to the simulated and experimental results, the free space transmission length of 400 to 940 m can be achieved based on various WDM-FSO downstream signals and their corresponding power budget, when the wavelengths are without optical amplification.

In the paper, we propose and design a ring-topology wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) access network for long-reach signal transmission. Here, the new central office (CO) and optical network unit (ONU) modules are designed to construct the ring-based architecture for symmetric data connection. Thus, the Rayleigh backscattering (RB) beat noise can be prevented due to the unidirectional downstream and upstream signal connections. In the demonstration, eight WDM wavelengths with 10 Gbit/s on-off keying (OOK) modulation are applied to serve as the symmetric downstream and upstream traffic through 105 km fiber connection without dispersion compensation. In addition, the minimum power budgets of 33.8, 36.1 and 35.4 dB among the eight WDM wavelengths can be obtained at the back-to-back (BtB), 51 and 105 km fiber links, respectively, under the forward error correction (FEC) target.

In the work, a ring-constructed wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) access system for delivering multiple free space optical (FSO) wireless signals is investigated. To reach the FSO transmission through single-mode fiber (SMF) connection, the optical wireless unit (OWU) and remote OWU are designed in the WDM network. The downstream and upstream WDM FSO channels could be transmitted in unidirectional propagation with the same wavelength. Hence, the presented ring-based WDM network not only can transmit the FSO signal, but also can circumvent the Rayleigh backscattering (RB) interferometric beat noise. In addition, according to the experimental results, the SMF and FSO transmission lengths can reach 50 km and 500 to 1000 m at the forward error correction (FEC) level without using optical amplification and dispersion compensation, respectively, when four WDM wavelengths are exploited experimentally for demonstration.

In this work, we propose and demonstrate a received-signal-strength (RSS) based visible-light-positioning (VLP) system using sigmoid function data preprocessing (SFDP) method; and apply it to two types of regression based machine learning algorithms; including the second-order linear regression machine learning (LRML) algorithm, and the kernel ridge regression machine learning (KRRML) algorithm. Experimental results indicate that the use of SFDP method can significantly improve the positioning accuracies in both the LRML and KRRML algorithms. Besides, the SFDP with KRRML scheme outperforms the other three schemes in terms of position accuracy, with the experimental average positioning error of about 2 cm in both horizontal and vertical directions.

In this paper, we propose a long-reach star-ring-based timeand wavelength-divisionmultiplexing passive optical network (TWDM-PON) by using fiberand free space optical (FSO)-protected architecture against fiber breakpoint. Here, the new fiber-based and FSO-based optical network unit (ONU) modules are designed in the PON system to achieve the self-protected operation. Thus, the adjacent ONU is linked to produce the fiberor FSO-based reconnections. Thus, 4 × 10 Gbit/s downstream and 10 Gbit/s upstream signals can be reached through 70 km fiber transmission and a length of free space link without signal amplification and dispersion compensation. Moreover, the relationships of splitter ratio and FSO link length in the proposed TWDM access network are also analyzed and discussed.

Mode-division-multiplexing (MDM) can increase the total on-chip transmission capacity. Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) based MDM multiplexer (MUX) and demultiplexer (DEMUX) using asymmetrical directional couplers (ADCs) are promising; however, they usually require long coupling lengths for mode conversion. Here, for the first time up to the authors' knowledge, we propose, simulate, fabricate and demonstrate a size reduced SOI based $4 \times 4$ MDM MUX and DEMUX using enhanced evanescent-wave coupling (EEC). Here, we illustrate by experiments and numerically analyses that by size reducing the ADC access coupling region, evanescent-wave coupling is enhanced. Significant coupling length reduction of ~80 % can be achieved, while similar MDM MUX and DEMUX performance can be observed. To experimentally evaluate the broadband and high-speed transmission operations of the proposed device, 48 wavelength channels each modulated by >60 Gbit/s orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals are successfully mode multiplexed and demultiplexed, achieving a transmission capacity of 11.73 Tbit/s.

In this investigation, a wavelength-selected single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) erbium-doped fiber (EDF) ring laser utilizing C-band EDF based gain medium over a tuning bandwidth of 1524.0 to 1573.0 nm is demonstrated experimentally. A self-injection Rayleigh backscattering (RB) is designed in the EDF ring laser configuration to suppress the multi-longitudinal-mode (MLM) oscillation and narrow the obtained linewidth. Here, the physical output features of the proposed self-injected RB EDF laser are also studied and discussed, such as the optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR), output power, and laser linewidth, respectively. Therefore, the demonstrated EDF laser not only can reach SLM output, but also can produce a flat output spectrum of 1524.0 to 1554.0 nm with 0.2 dB power variation. Moreover, the measured fluctuation of each wavelength can be kept at ±0.05 nm based on the presented self-injected RB EDF laser, while the uncertainty issue is also considered.

Due to the popularity of different high bandwidth applications, it is becoming increasingly difficult to satisfy the huge data capacity requirements, since the traditional electrical interconnects suffer significantly from limited bandwidth and huge power consumption. Silicon photonics (SiPh) is one of the important technologies for increasing interconnect capacity and decreasing power consumption. Mode-division multiplexing (MDM) allows signals to be transmitted simultaneously, at different modes, in a single waveguide. Wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and orthogonal-frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) can also be utilized to further increase the optical interconnect capacity. In SiPh integrated circuits, waveguide bends are usually inevitable. However, for an MDM system with a multimode bus waveguide, the modal fields will become asymmetric when the waveguide bend is sharp. This will introduce inter-mode coupling and inter-mode crosstalk. One simple approach to achieve sharp bends in multimode bus waveguide is to use a Euler curve. Although it has been reported in the literature that sharp bends based on a Euler curve allow high performance and low inter-mode crosstalk multimode transmissions, we discover, by simulation and experiment, that the transmission performance between two Euler bends is length dependent, particularly when the bends are sharp. We investigate the length dependency of the straight multimode bus waveguide between two Euler bends. High transmission performance can be achieved by a proper design of the waveguide length, width, and bend radius. By using the optimized MDM bus waveguide length with sharp Euler bends, proof-of-concept NOMA-OFDM experimental transmissions, supporting two MDM modes and two NOMA users, are performed.

Silicon photonics (SiPh) are considered a promising technology for increasing interconnect speed and capacity while decreasing power consumption. Mode division multiplexing (MDM) enables signals to be transmitted in different orthogonal modes in a single waveguide core. Wideband MDM components simultaneously supporting wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) can significantly increase the transmission capacity for optical interconnects. In this work, we propose, fabricate and demonstrate a wideband and channel switchable MDM optical power divider on an SOI platform, supporting single, dual and triple modes. The switchable MDM power divider consists of two parts. The first part is a cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) for switching the data from their original TE0, TE1 and TE2 modes to different modes among themselves. After the target modes are identified, mode up-conversion and Y-branch are utilized in the second part for the MDM power division. Here, 48 WDM wavelength channels carrying OFDM data are successfully switched and power divided. An aggregated capacity of 7.682 Tbit/s is achieved, satisfying the pre-forward error correction (pre-FEC) threshold (bit-error-rate, BER = 3.8 × 10−3). Although up to three MDM modes are presented in the proof-of-concept demonstration here, the proposed scheme can be scaled to higher order modes operation.

In order to achieve high-capacity visible light communication (VLC), five dimensions in physics, including frequency, time, quadrature modulation, space, and polarization can be utilized. Orthogonality should be maintained in order to reduce the crosstalk among different dimensions. In this work, we illustrate a high-capacity 21.01 Gbit/s optical beam steerable VLC system with vibration mitigation based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) signals using red, green, and blue (RGB) laser-diodes (LDs). The OFDM-NOMA can increase the spectral efficiency of VLC signal by allowing high overlapping of different data channel spectra in the power domain to maximize the bandwidth utilization. In the NOMA scheme, different data channels are digitally multiplexed using different levels of power with superposition coding at the transmitter (Tx). Successive interference cancellation (SIC) is then utilized at the receiver (Rx) to retrieve different power multiplexed data channels. The total data rates (i.e., Data 1 and Data 2) achieved by the R/G/B OFDM-NOMA channels are 8.07, 6.62, and 6.32 Gbit/s, respectively, achieving an aggregated data rate of 21.01 Gbit/s. The corresponding average signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of Data 1 in the R, G, and B channels are 9.05, 9.18 and 8.94 dB, respectively, while that of Data 2 in the R, G, and B channels are 14.92, 14.29, and 13.80 dB, respectively.

The high precision three-dimensional (3D) visible light-based indoor positioning (VLIP) systems have gained much attention recently for people or robot navigation, access tracking, etc. In this work, we put forward and present the first demonstration, up to the authors’ knowledge, of a 3D VLIP system utilizing a two-stage neural network (TSNN) model. The positioning performance would degrade when the distance between the light emitting diode (LED) plane and the receiver (Rx) plane increases; however, because of the finite LED field-of-view (FOV), light non-overlap zones are created. These light non-overlap zones will produce high positioning error particularly for the 3D VLIP systems. Here, we also propose and demonstrate the Received-Intensity-Selective-Enhancement scheme, known as RISE, to alleviate the light non-overlap zones in the VLIP system. In a practical test-room with dimensions of 200 × 150 × 300 cm3, the experimental results show that the mean errors in the training and testing data sets are reduced by 54.1% and 27.9% when using the TSNN model with RISE in the z-direction, and they are reduced by 39.1% and 37.8% in the xy-direction, respectively, when comparing that with using a one stage NN model only. At the cumulative distribution function (CDF) P90, the TSNN model with RISE can reduce the errors by 36.78% when compared with that in the one stage NN model.

In this research, we present and design a blended wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON) architecture to deliver both baseband and free-space optical (FSO) signals by using two wavelength bands over an available bandwidth to avoid the signal interference. Only using few additional components in the optical line termination (OLT) and optical network unit (ONU)/optical wireless unit (OWU) can achieve self-protected operation in the presented hybrid fiber-FSO access network against fiber breakage. In the measurement, eight WDM wavelengths with 24.3 Gbit/s on-off keying (OOK) modulation format are applied to verify and discuss the bit error rate (BER) performances of baseband and FSO signals, respectively, through 25 km fiber and 2 m wireless FSO connections. Therefore, the presented PON not only can deliver both baseband and FSO traffics, but can also provide a self-restored mechanism against fiber fault.

Radio-over-fiber (ROF)-based mobile fronthaul network supporting the baseband unit and simple remote radio head is a promising network architecture for future wireless networks. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a silicon photonics (SiPh)-based remote radio frontend (RRF) for the mm-wave ROF systems. The proposed SiPh-based RRF consisted of an integrated Mach-Zehnder modulator and a micro-ring modulator, producing a single-sideband 40 GHz millimeter-wave orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing ROF signal, which is robust against fiber chromatic dispersion in the mobile fronthaul transmission. The RRF is fabricated using SiPh platform and could be potentially low cost. High split-ratios can be potentially achieved. Data rate of 7.813 Gbit/s per wavelength channel is achieved in the experiment. Numerical analysis is also performed; there are good matches of the simulation and experimental results.

In this work, for the first time, we demonstrate a 1250 Mbit/s on-off keying white-light visible light communication (VLC) transmission in a free space transmission length of 1 m by utilizing a yellow-phosphor laser diode (LD). Here, the blue optical filter, which is used to enhance the data rate by removing the yellow color component, is not required to. Besides, the wireless transmission lengths, illuminations, and modulation traffic rates of the proposed LD-based VLC system are analyzed and discussed.

To achieve the high traffic rate of a GaN LED-based visible light communication (VLC), a 4 × 4 color-polarization-multiplexing system is demonstrated by using two blue and two green LEDs. In the measurement, an available bandwidth of blue and green LEDs can be greater than 465 MHz for VLC modulation traffic by using the suitable analogy front end circuit. Hence, the proposed VLC system can deliver 1.7 to 2.3 Gbit/s on-off keying traffic rates in the free space transmission length of 1-4 m under the extremely low illumination of 6.9-136.1 lux for the indoor application. Moreover, the measured BER of each LED is less than the forward error correction target of 3.8 × 10-3 to maintain the better signal performance.

We propose and demonstrate a CMOS rolling-shutter pattern decoding scheme based on two newly introduced schemes, named row grayscale redistribution and differential grayscale packet selection to improve the performance in decoding the CMOS rolling-shutter pattern in translational or rotational motions. Results show that even the CMOS image sensor is in translational or rotational motions, no significant signal degradation is observed at wireless transmission distance up to 150 cm. The maximum visible light communication data rate at different wireless transmission distances is also analyzed.

In the paper, we present and design a self-restored wavelength multiplexing division passive optical network (WDM-PON) configuration to prevent the fiber failure and data disconnection. Here, the new remote node (RN) and optical network unit (ONU) are proposed in the fiber network to provide the protection behavior to increase the network reliability and flexibility. Moreover, the network performances of WDM signals are also analyzed and discussed.

In this work, we demonstrate an integrated optical baseband, free space optical (FSO) communication and millimeter-wave (MMW) traffics through the present passive optical network (PON) architecture by utilizing single wavelength for broadcasting triple-play services. In the execution, we exploit 10 Gbit/s on-off keying (OOK) modulation on 10 GHz Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) to produce the downstream baseband signal. And the 10 Gbit/s baseband signal also can cause FSO traffic within the forward error correction (FEC) target after 25 km fiber and 160 m free space transmissions. Moreover, we can utilize the fiber to the extension (FTTE) scheme to provide the 36.42 GHz MMW with 10 Gbit/s OOK data after 25 km fiber link and 8 km extended fiber transmission.