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High-bandwidth signals are needed in many applications like radar, sensing, measurement and communications. Especially in optical networks, the sampling rate and analog bandwidth of digital-to-analog converters (DACs) is a bottleneck for further increasing data rates. To circumvent the sampling rate and bandwidth problem of electronic DACs, we demonstrate the generation of wide-band signals with low-bandwidth electronics. This generation is based on orthogonal sampling with sinc-pulse sequences in N parallel branches. The method not only reduces the sampling rate and bandwidth, at the same time the effective number of bits (ENOB) is improved, dramatically reducing the requirements on the electronic signal processing. In proof of concept experiments the generation of analog signals, as well as Nyquist shaped and normal data will be shown. In simulations we investigate the performance of 60 GHz data generation by 20 and 12 GHz electronics. The method can easily be integrated together with already existing electronic DAC designs and would be of great interest for all high-bandwidth applications.

We demonstrate for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, reconfigurable and real-time orthogonal time-domain demultiplexing of coherent multilevel Nyquist signals in silicon photonics. No external pulse source is needed and frequencytime coherence is used to sample the incoming Nyquist OTDM signal with orthogonal sinc-shaped Nyquist pulse sequences using Mach-Zehnder modulators. All the parameters such as bandwidth and channel selection are completely tunable in the electrical domain. The feasibility of this scheme is demonstrated through a demultiplexing experiment over the entire C-band (1530 nm - 1550 nm), employing 24 Gbaud Nyquist QAM signals due to experimental constraints on the transmitter side. However, the silicon Mach-Zehnder modulator with a 3-dB bandwidth of only 16 GHz can demultiplex Nyquist pulses of 90 GHz optical bandwidth suggesting a possibility to reach symbol rates up to 90 GBd in an integrated Nyquist transceiver.

As the bit rates of routed data streams exceed the throughput of single wavelength-division multiplexing channels, spectral traffic aggregation becomes essential for optical network scaling. Here we propose a scheme for all-optical aggregation of several low bitrate channels to fewer channels with higher spectral efficiency. The method is based on optical vector summation facilitated by coherent spectral superposition. Thereby it does not need any optical nonlinearities and is based on linear signal processing with an electro-optic modulator. Furthermore, optical phase tuning required for vector addition can be easily achieved by a phase tuning of the radio frequency signal driving the modulator. We experimentally demonstrate the aggregation of two 10 Gbaud BPSK signals into one 10 Gbaud QPSK and one 10 Gbaud PAM-4 signal, the aggregation of two 10 Gbaud QPSK signals into 10 Gbaud QAM-16, as well as the aggregation of sinc-shaped Nyquist signals. The presented concept of in-line all-optical aggregation demonstrates considerable improvement in network spectrum utilization and can significantly enhance the operational capacity with reduced complexity. It provides a new way for realizing the flexible optical transmission of advanced modulation format signals, and suits for future dynamically reconfigurable optical networks. Since the method is based on linear signal processing with electro-optic modulator, integration into any integrated photonic platform is straightforward.

Increasing capacity demands in the access networks require inventive concepts for the transmission and distribution of digital as well as analog signals over the same network. Here a new transceiver system, which is completely agnostic for the signals to be transmitted is presented. Nyquist sampling and time multiplexing of N phase and intensity modulated digital and analog channels with one single modulator, as well as the transmission and demultiplexing with another modulator have been demonstrated. The aggregate symbol rate corresponds to the modulator bandwidth and can be further increased by a modification of the setup. No high-speed electronic signal processing or high bandwidth photonics is required. Apart from its simplicity and the possibility to process high bandwidth signals with low bandwidth electronics and photonics, the method has the potential to be easily integrated into any platform and thus, might be a solution for the increasing data rates in future access networks.