This paper presents a novel 60 GHz-band photonic-integrated array-antenna and module for radio-over-fiber (RoF)-based beam forming. An integrated photonic array-antennas (IPA), where eight photodiodes and 4×2 arrayed patch-antenna are integrated in a single board, is actually fabricated, and 3.5-Gbit/s QPSK digital signal transmission with beam forming of the IPA is experimentally demonstrated. In addition, a novel 60-GHz compact antenna module is proposed and fabricated for increasing the number of antenna elements and flexibility creating various beam patterns. The feasibility of beam forming operation for the proposed antenna module is confirmed by a 60-GHz RoF transmission experiment. The capability of detecting the mobile terminal direction, which is one of the indispensable functions for actual environment, is also studied. The obtained results in this paper will be useful for designing future radio access networks based on RoF transmission technology.

The corrugated waveguide parameters and the threshold current densities of the TE and TM modes in InGaAsP/InP λ/4-shifted DFB lasers with non-reflective ends were calculated and the TE/TM ratio over 30 dB was expected. The experimental TE/TM ratios of about 35 dB in a directly modulated condition were shown.

This paper studies the performance of the quantitative RF power variation in Radio-over-Fiber beam forming system utilizing a phased array-antenna integrating photo-diodes in downlink network for next generation millimeter wave band radio access. Firstly, we described details of fabrication of an integrated photonic array-antenna (IPA), where a 60GHz patch antenna 4×2 array and high-speed photo-diodes were integrated into a substrate. We evaluated RF transmission efficiency as an IPA system for Radio-over-Fiber (RoF)-based mobile front hall architecture with remote antenna beam forming capability. We clarified the characteristics of discrete and integrated devices such as an intensity modulator (IM), an optical fiber and the IPA and calculated RF power radiated from the IPA taking account of the measured data of the devices. Based on the experimental results on RF tone signal transmission by utilizing the IPA, attainable transmission distance of wireless communication by improvement and optimization of the used devices was discussed. We deduced that the antenna could output sufficient power when we consider that the cell size of the future mobile communication systems would be around 100 meters or smaller.

The threshold current Ith of a 1.5 µm range InGaAsP/InP λ/4-shifted DFB laser with low-reflectivity ends was theoretically expected to be 10 mA or less. Experimentally, Ith of 14-16 mA at 20 and the sub-mode suppression ratio of about 35 dB or more in the temperature range of 10-70 were obtained.

High speed pulse modulation of the injection lasers at non-bias condition has been studied to reduce the pattern effect. Rate equations involving the effect of spontaneous emission enable us to analyze the pulse response of carriers and photons both starting from zero in the cavity. The increase of threshold current and the decrease of delay time are derived as a function of the width of driving pulse current at the non-bias condition. Theoretical results were in good agreement with the experiments. The effect of accumulation carriers in the active region is analyzed in details. It is pointed out that the effect of accumulation carriers in the active region limits the rate of pulse repetition when the pattern effect is required to be small. To overcome this effect a new method which utilizes the application of reverse pulse to a laser diode immediately after the emission of light pulse is proposed. This method has been proved experimentally to be effective. A series capacitance to a laser diode was used to produce reverse pulse, and in this way two pulses have been applied at the interval of 2 nsec. Further investigation on the pulse repetition rate together with the consideration of series resistance in the driving circuit has lead to the conclusion that a few Gbit/sec is possible with AlGaAs DH lasers at the non-bias condition. In these lasers, however, very thin active layers with low impurity concentration are required.

Spontaneous carrier lifetimes in InGaAsP/InP double heterostructure lasers emitting at1.3µm were experimentally determined from lasing delay time measarement. Various step-current superposed on bias current was applied to a laser diode with 20 µm-stripe geometry. The carrier lifetime apparently decreased with increasing bias current from 4-5 ns at non-biased state to2 ns at well biased state. This change in the measured lifetime was explained by considering the effect of junction capacitance. It was shown that the effect was almost removed by the application of bias current of more than1 kAcm-2. µm-1 and then the intrinsic lifetime was obtained. Deduced carrier lifetime well agreed with that estimated from relaxation oscillation measurement.

Feasibility of 20 Gbit/s single channel transoceanic soliton transmission systems with a simple EDFA repeaters configuration has been studied. Both a simple and versatile soliton pulse generator and a polarization insensitive optical demultiplexer, which can provide a almost square shape optical gate with duration of full bit time period, have been proposed and demonstrated by using sinusoidally modulated electroabsorption modulators. The optical time-division multiplexing/demultiplexing scheme using the optical demultiplexer results in drastic improvement of bit error rate characteristics. We have experimentally confirmed that the use of alternating-amplitude solitons is an efficient way to mitigate not only soliton-soliton interaction but also Gordon-Haus timing jitter constraints in multi-ten Gbit/s soliton transmission. Timing jitter reduction using relatively wide band optical filter bas been investigated in 20 Gbit/s loop experiments and single-carrier, single-polarization 20 Gbit/s soliton data transmission over 11500 km with bit error rate of below 10-9 has been experimentally demonstrated, using the modulator-based soliton source, the optical demultiplexer, the alternation-amplitude solitons, and wide-band optical filters. Obtained 230 Tbit/skm transmission capacity shows the feasibility of 20 Gbit/s single channel soliton transoceanic systems using fully practical technologies.

Optical regeneration technique using an electro-absorption modulator (EAM) is reviewed. Simple 3R optical regeneration using an EAM was proposed and verified at 20 Gbit/s. The optical nonlinearities including cross-absorption modulation (XAM) and cross-phase modulation (XPM) induced in an EAM were quantitatively characterized by experiment. High bit-rate 2R type all-optical regeneration (wavelength conversion) at 100 Gbit/s was demonstrated by an EAM in conjunction with a delayed interferometer (DI) with required optical pulse energy of 1.5 pJ. It was verified that the operable bandwidth of the EAM-DI wavelength converter at 40 Gbit/s covered almost full range of C-band without tuning operation conditions.

The operation of a polarization mode dispersion (PMD) compensator using a polarizer and a Faraday rotator-based polarization controller (FRPC) is analyzed in detail, and the compensation performance is experimentally evaluated in 40 Gbit/s operation. The evaluation results show that a wide range of differential group delay over a bit period can almost be completely compensated using the PMD compensator. The characteristics of electrical spectrum-based signal monitoring methods are investigated in detail, and the results shows advantages of a low frequency band monitoring method that produces about double the wider dynamic range than a fundamental repetition frequency monitoring method. The automated PMD compensator using a polarizer and a FRPC driven by the low frequency band monitoring method is experimentally investigated using a terrestrial 40 Gbit/s wavelength division multiplexing system involving 350-km installed single-mode fibers. The PMD compensator produces highly stable signal performance in the field environment for a long term and reduces the standard deviation of the Q-factor distribution.

All optical regenerations or wavelength conversions using SOA-based polarization discriminated switch injected by an assist light were investigated. First of all, cross gain modulation (XGM) and cross phase modulation (XPM) in a SOA injected by an external assist light were quantitatively analyzed. A simple measurement technique of XGM and XPM was shown to confirm that the injection of assist light could reduce a gain recovery time with some sacrifice for XGM and XPM efficiency. All-optical 3R regeneration using two-stage SOA-based polarization discriminated switch at 40 Gbit/s and its tolerances for some degradation against intensity deviation and optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) were also shown. Finally, regeneration capability was evaluated through a dispersion shifted fiber (DSF)-based re-circulating loop transmission experiment. Those results indicate that the SOA-based polarization discriminated switch is a promising candidate for all-optical regenerator from the practical point of view.

This paper proposes a simple and practical scheme to decide the direction of a phased array antenna beam in wireless access systems using Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) technique. The feasibility of the proposed scheme is confirmed by the optical and wireless transmission experiments using 2GHz RoF signals. In addition, two-dimensional steering operation in the millimeter-wave band is demonstrated for targeting future high-speed wireless communication systems. The required system parameters for practical use are also provided by investigating the induced transmission penalties. The proposed detection scheme is applicable to two-dimensional antenna beam steering in the millimeter-wave band by properly designing the fiber length and wavelength variable range.