The design practice of resonant electrodes is reported for guided-wave light modulators using coplanar waveguide electrodes. A matching stub built with the resonator provides compact structure and satisfactory electrical performance. It is notable that the wide-gap resonator electrode yields the decrease in driving power.

The history of forward error correction in optical communications is reviewed. The various types of FEC are classified as belonging to three generations. The first generation FEC represents the first to be successful in submarine systems, when the use of RS(255, 239) became widespread as ITU-T G.975, and also as G.709 for terrestrial systems. As WDM systems matured, a quest began for a stronger second generation FEC. Several types of concatenated code were proposed for this, and were installed in commercial systems. The advent of third-generation FEC opened up new vistas for the next generation of optical communication systems. Thanks to soft decision decoding and block turbo codes, a net coding gain of 10.1 dB has been demonstrated experimentally. That brought us a number of positive impacts on existing systems. Each new generation of FEC was compared in terms of the ultimate coding gain. The Shannon limit was discussed for hard or soft decision decoding. Several functionalities employing the FEC framing were introduced, such as overall wrapping by the FEC frame enabling the asynchronous multiplexing of different clients' data. Fast polarization scrambling with FEC was effective in mitigating polarization mode dispersion, and the error monitor function proved useful for the adaptive equalization of both chromatic dispersion and PMD.

Methodologies for more efficient Raman amplification and a more suitable modulation format for 40 Gbit/s WDM unrepeatered transmission are investigated. Management of the fiber effective area is proposed to realize low noise distributed Raman amplification. An Aeff management technique in which low-Aeff fiber is located in a median section instead of the last section, was confirmed numerically and experimentally to improve the OSNR and Q-factor. Carrier-suppressed-return-to-zero (CS-RZ) modulation has the advantage of reducing fiber-nonlinearity effects and permitting denser multiplexing of the wavelengths. 40 Gbit/s 32-channel unrepeatered WDM transmission over 202 km was demonstrated employing the proposed methodologies.

This paper describes on the transmission properties of the superconducting coplanar waveguide on LiNbO3 (LN) substrates, fabricated by YBa2Cu3Oy (YBCO) superconducting films. The films have been prepared by the reactive co-evaporation method and patterned by a wet etching process. The surface resistance of the obtained film was 0.04 Ω at 18 GHz and 77 K. It was confirmed from X-ray diffraction (XRD) that these films were highly oriented to the direction of c-axis without a secondary phase. The microwave transmission properties of these YBCO coplanar waveguides were investigated at frequencies up to 20 GHz and compared with that of the aluminum coplanar waveguide. The characteristic impedances of both coplanar waveguides were designed to be 50 Ω. It was found that the attenuation constants of these samples at 77 K were less than that of the aluminum coplanar waveguide for frequencies below 18 GHz.

As ROADMs (Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers) are becoming widely used in metro/core networks, distributed control of wavelength paths by extended GMPLS (Generalized MultiProtocol Label Switching) protocols has attracted much attention. For the automatic establishment of an arbitrary wavelength path satisfying dynamic traffic demands over a ROADM or WXC (Wavelength Cross Connect)-based network, precise determination of chromatic dispersion over the path and optimized assignment of dispersion compensation capabilities at related nodes are essential. This paper reports an experiment over in-field fibers where GMPLS-based control was applied for the automatic discovery of chromatic dispersion, path computation, and wavelength path establishment with dynamic adjustment of variable dispersion compensation. The GMPLS-based control scheme, which the authors called GMPLS-Plus, extended GMPLS's distributed control architecture with attributes for automatic discovery, advertisement, and signaling of chromatic dispersion. In this experiment, wavelength paths with distances of 24 km and 360 km were successfully established and error-free data transmission was verified. The experiment also confirmed path restoration with dynamic compensation adjustment upon fiber failure.

The characteristics of a LiNbO3 light modulator using the resonant YBa2Cu3Oy superconducting electrode were studied on the basis of the calculated results of surface resistances and transmission losses. The two-fluid model and the conventional transmission theory were used for the calculations. It was found that the modulation depth of this modulator using the YBCO electrode at 77 K was 7.5 times that using the Al electrode at room temperature. The drive voltage for the phase modulation of π radians was estimated to be a very low value of 2.3 V.

A filter-type coplanar parallel electrode with periodically loaded reactances is introduced to construct guided-wave light modulators of limited bandwidth. The device was built by using a Ti:LiNbO3 optical waveguide and was operated successfully at 633 nm. Measured 3 dB bandwidth was 1 GHz centered at 14.8 GHz. Required modulating power for 1 rad phase modulation was 67.6 mW.

The characteristics of a LiNbO3 light modulafor using the resonant YBa2Cu3Oy superconducting electrode were studied on the basis of the calculated results of surface resistances and transmission losses. The two-fluid model and the conventional transmission theory were used for the calculations. It was found that the modulation depth of this modulator using the YBCO electrode at 77 K was 7.5 times that using the Al electrode at room temperature. The drive voltage for the phase modulation of π radians was estimated to be a very low value of 2.3 V.

Optical transmission systems with large capacity employing wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) techniques are now widely under development. Optical amplifiers, especially Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers (EDFA's), are vital components for such transmission systems. Optical amplifiers in WDM systems are employed as common amplifiers for all WDM'ed optical carriers, therefore, change in power of a specific carrier gives rise to gain fluctuation of the remaining carriers. In this paper, we discuss about automatic gain control (AGC) of EDFA for WDM'ed optical carriers under transient gain saturation. Two methods have been reported to perform AGC, i.e., pump feedback control method and compensation light feedback control method. Theory and experimental results have been already reported on pump feedback control method. Here, theory has been generalized to be applicable for compensation light feedback method including schematics with amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) as a probe light to measure the gain of EDFA. Experimental results have confirmed the analysis. Good performance has been obtained for both methods with simple electronic circuits and ASE has been found to work as an excellent probe light source.