In this letter, we report on the advances toward the integration of our developed continuous variables (CV) quantum key distribution (QKD) system in existing optical infrastructure and wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) networks. First, we investigate the tolerance of the CV-QKD system to spontaneous Raman scattering (SRS) noise, the latter being the most dominant impairment in a WDM co-existence environment for QKD. In particular, we investigate by experiment the impact of a WDM 10 × 10 Gb/s ON-OFF-keying signal in terms of induced SRS noise in the QKD channel. The spontaneous SRS noise influence is assessed for different transmission scenarios, i.e., for various optical launch powers of the WDM signal, and for different transmission links of 20, 40, 60, and 80 km. Based on the experimental data and on the measured system's parameters, we estimate the key rates and reach capabilities of the proposed CV-QKD system. The scheme supports a key rate of 90 kbit/s over 20 km, for an ideal QKD system multiplexed with 2-mW optical power. A step further, we demonstrate for first time the use of the aforementioned CV-QKD system to encrypt a 10GE client service over deployable optical transport network legacy equipment over 20 km. Our results prove the feasibility of the integration of our proposed scheme with legacy telecom equipment in existing WDM optical networks.

In this article, we describe advances in digital signal processing (DSP) techniques that enable Tb/s transmission, and software-defined flexible transponders that support adaptive modulation formats and elastic optical networks (EONs).

A novel approach is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for optical steganography transmission in WDM networks using temporal phase coded optical signals with spectral notch filtering. A temporal phase coded stealth channel is temporally and spectrally overlaid onto a public WDM channel. Direct detection of the public channel is achieved in the presence of the stealth channel. The interference from the public channel is suppressed by spectral notching before the detection of the optical stealth signal. The approach is shown to have good compatibility and robustness to the existing WDM network for optical steganography transmission.

Optical performance monitoring (OPM) is an important tool to facilitate the management of future optical fiber communication networks. OPM measures the states of the physical layer and provides feedback to the network controller for performing tasks such as link diagnosis and fault detection. OPM exists either as standalone devices integrated in the intermediate nodes, or it could be a set of algorithms running in devices such as the optical transceivers. A more effective network controller requires OPM to monitor multiple parameters in order to perform better network planning. However, this is considerably challenging for OPM at the intermediate nodes in consideration of cost efficiency, dynamic range, monitoring accuracy, etc. Here we show that, by using a pair of lowbandwidth coherent receivers and two local lasers, a multiparameter OPM at the intermediate nodes can be constructed. It is capable of scanning the optical spectrum, measuring the optical power, wavelength, and the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR). Furthermore, by exploiting the spectral correlation properties of the modern communication signals, it can also monitor chromatic dispersion (CD), polarization-mode dispersion (PMD), baudrate and timing phase. In more specific scenarios, it can also perform polarization tracking and modulation format identification. We provide the digital signal processing (DSP) details for estimating the optical parameters. Furthermore, we demonstrate the experimental results of a real-time prototype implementing all the essential parts of our proposed OPM.

In this paper, we present a field-trial C-band 72Gbit/s optical on-off keying (OOK) system over 18.8 km dispersion-uncompensated submarine optical cable in the South China Sea. Chromatic dispersion (CD) of 18.8 km submarine optical cable causes four spectral nulls on the 36 GHz bandwidth of 72Gbit/s OOK signal, which is the main obstacle for achieving an acceptable bit-error-rate (BER) performance. Decision feedback equalizer (DFE) is effective to compensate for the spectral nulls. However, DFE has a serious defect of burst-error propagation when the burst errors emerge due to the unstable submarine environment. Weighted DFE (WDFE) can be used to mitigate the burst-error propagation, but it cannot fully compensate for the spectral nulls because only a part of feedback symbols is directly decided. Fortunately, maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) can be added after the WDFE to simultaneously eliminate the residual spectral distortions and implement optimal detection. Compared to the joint DFE and MLSE algorithm, the joint WDFE and MLSE algorithm can effectively suppress the burst-error propagation to obtain a maximum 2.9 dB improvement of Q factor and eliminate the phenomenon of BER floor. In conclusion, the joint WDFE and MLSE algorithm can solve the burst-error propagation for the field-trial fiber-optic communications.

The performances of various blind timing phase estimators (TPE) for digital coherent receiver are analyzed. The equivalence among four TPE algorithms is analytically presented, showing that two TPE algorithms applying squaring pre-filters are in fact identical. Three TPE algorithms applicable to Nyquist signals are proposed based on the equivalence analysis. In addition, the impact of receiver bandwidths, spectrum weighting bandwidths and signal timing phases on TPE performance are investigated. The definition of sampling diversity and the analysis of sampling diversity gain for four pulse shapes are presented. The effect of sampling diversity is observed and verified via both simulations and experiments.