This paper introduces a novel underwater (UW) optical communication system that utilizes optical code division multiple access transmission technique using the permutation vector code. Three scenarios of water are considered, pure sea (PS), clear ocean (CL), and coastal ocean (CO). The performance is evaluated analytically in terms of bit error rate (BER), received power, signal to noise ratio for different UW links and data rates. The results show that the shortest UW range is achieved in the case of CO, achieving the highest extinction ratio compared to CL and PS. Considering a BER below the forward error correction (FEC) limit of 3 × $${10}^{-3}$$10 - 3 , the maximum UW ranges reached are 21 m for PS, 12 m for CL, and 8 m for CO at 3 Gbps with 20 dBm transmitted power. The propagation range could be increased when the transmitted power is increased to 25 dBm, achieving the ranges of 31 m, 18 m, and 9 m, for PS, CL, and CO, respectively.

A simple active mode-locked erbium-doped fiber (EDF) ring laser is characterized and experimentally demonstrated. The active mode-locked laser can be tuned in the C-band wavelength range 1525 nm to 1565 nm using a tunable bandpass filter placed in the cavity. An intensity modulator placed inside the laser cavity is driven using a sinusoidal signal at different repetition rates. The laser can produce trains of pulses with a width that is controlled using the mode-locking order. The experiments demonstrated an active mode-locked laser that can generate pulse trains with 39 ns width at multiple cavity fundamental frequency of 0.67 MHz repetition rate. Numerical simulations are conducted to investigate the effect of the tunable filter bandwidth and the power of the EDF 980 nm pump on the mode-locking process and produced pulses width.

On-chip optical phased arrays (OPAs) are the enabling technology for diverse applications, ranging from optical interconnects to metrology and light detection and ranging (LIDAR). To meet the required performance demands, OPAs need to achieve a narrow beam width and wide-angle steering, along with efficient sidelobe suppression. A typical OPA configuration consists of either one-dimensional (1D) linear or two-dimensional (2D) rectangular arrays. However, the presence of grating sidelobes from these array configurations in the far-field pattern limits the aliasing-free beam steering, when the antenna element spacing is larger than half of a wavelength. In this work, we provide numerical analysis for 2D circular OPAs with radially arranged nano-antennas. The circular array geometry is shown to effectively suppress the grating lobes, expand the range for beam steering and obtain narrower beamwidths, while increasing element spacing to about 10 μm. To allow for high coupling efficiency, we propose the use of a central circular grating coupler to feed the designed circular OPA. Leveraging radially positioned nano-antennas and an efficient central grating coupler, our design can yield an aliasing-free azimuthal field of view (FOV) of 360°, while the elevation angle FOV is limited by the far-field beamwidth of the nano-antenna element and its array arrangement. With a main-to-sidelobe contrast ratio of 10 dB, a 110-element OPA offers an elevation FOV of 5° and an angular beamwidth of 1.14°, while an 870-element array provides an elevation FOV up to 20° with an angular beamwidth of 0.35°. Our analysis suggests that the performance of the circular OPAs can be further improved by integrating more elements, achieving larger aliasing-free FOV and narrower beamwidths. Our proposed design paves a new way for the development of on-chip OPAs with large 2D beam steering and high resolutions in communications and LIDAR systems.

We demonstrate a practical wavelength reuse bidirectional analog radio-over-fiber (A-RoF) system served by a single distributed feedback (DFB) laser. Frequency interleaving of downlink and uplink signals is proposed to ameliorate the spectral efficiency and mitigate the interference raised by the bidirectional transmission. Pre-emphasis is exploited to counteract the performance impairment brought about by the interaction between laser chirp and fiber chromatic dispersion. Through employing 64-QAM modulated 16 bands and 16-QAM modulated 12 bands filtered orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (f-OFDM) signals with 200 MHz bandwidth, asymmetric transmission with superior flexibility over 25 km fiber is attained, with an aggregate capacity of 20 Gb/s for downlink and 10 Gb/s for uplink. The mutual interference between the downlink and uplink is explored by overlapping the downlink and uplink signal spectra to varying degrees. Using the optimum frequency configuration, system performance is evaluated in terms of EVM and phase noise. To further investigate the effects caused by the Rayleigh backscattering and the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), simulations are conducted on the proposed architecture, validating the conclusion from the experiment that the bidirectional transmission is primarily limited by the Rayleigh backscattering than the stimulated Brillouin scattering.