Modulation and demodulation techniques in optical heterodyne PSK transmission systems

Modulation and demodulation techniques are described for an optical PSK heterodyne transmission system operating at 560 Mb/s and 1.2 Gb/s. Performance limitations affecting the receiver sensitivity in a 1.2-Gb/s DPSK system, such as laser phase noise, phase modulation depth, IF center frequency deviation, and local laser power, are studied. High receiver sensitivities for PSK systems were achieved. The applicability of the Mach-Zehnder modulator as a phase modulator for 1.2-Gb/s DPSK is also demonstrated. A 1.2-Gb/s DPSK transmission of over 100 km, using polarization diversity with novel polarization-insensitive automatic frequency control in an attempt to overcome signal fading caused by polarization fluctuation in the transmitting fiber, is also described. A receiver sensitivity of less than -42.8 dBm and varying within 1.4 dB for all states of polarization was achieved. A multichannel high-definition TV (HDTV) transmission experiment using a DPSK polarization-diversity tunable receiver is described. >