In this study, we devised a biofuel cell (BFC) by impregnating sheet-like cellulose nanofiber (CNF) with liquid fuel (fructose) and sandwiching it with the electrodes, making the structure simple and compact. CNF was considered as a suitable material for BFC because it is biocompatible, has a large specific surface area, and exhibits excellent properties as a catalyst and an adsorbent. In this BFC device, graphene-coated carbon fiber woven cloth (GCFC) was used as the material for preparing the electrodes, and the amount of enzyme modification on the surface of each electrode was enhanced. Further, as the distance between the electrodes was same as the thickness of the sheet-shaped CNF, it facilitated the exchange of protons between the electrodes. Moreover, the cathode, which requires an oxidation reaction, was exposed to the atmosphere to enhance the oxygen uptake. The maximum power density of the CNF-type BFC was recorded as 114.5 µW/cm2 at a voltage of 293 mV. This is more than 1.5 times higher than that of the liquid-fuel-type BFC. When measured after 24 h, the maximum power density was recorded as 44.9 µW/cm2 at 236 mV, and the output was maintained at 39% of that observed at the beginning of the measurement. However, it is not the case with general BFCs, where the power generation after 24 h is less than 5%. Therefore, the CNF-type BFCs have a longer lifespan and are fuel efficient.

Through novel rotation writing method of Bragg grating in multicore fiber, its strain vector characteristics are analyzed. The relation between the rotation angle and the strain curvature sensitivity is obtained. Reconstruction of strain vector is verified.

Communication networks for wide-scale distributed energy resources (DERs) including photovoltaics (PVs), wind, storage and battery systems and electric vehicles (EVs) will be indispensable in future power grids. In this paper, we compare optical fronthaul networks using existing optical ground wires (OPGWs) for centralized radio access network (C-RAN) architecture to realize cost effective wireless communication network expansion including low population area. We investigate the applicability of optical data transport technologies of physical layer split (PLS), analog radio-on-fiber (ARoF), and common public radio interface (CPRI). The deployment costs of them are comparatively analyzed. It was shown that physical layer split and analog radio-on-fiber with subcarrier multiplexing (SCM) result in lower cost than other technologies.

We propose an ultra-low inter-core crosstalk (XT) multi-core fiber (MCF) with standard 125-μm cladding. We show the fiber design and fabrication results of an MCF housing four cores with W-shaped index profile; it offers XT of less than -67dB/km over the whole C+L band. This enables us to realize 10,000-km transmission with negligible XT penalty. We also observe a low-loss of 0.17dB/km (average) at a wavelength of 1.55μm and other optical properties compatible with ITU-T G.654.B fiber. We also elucidate its good micro-bend resistance in terms of both the loss and XT to confirm its applicability to high-density optical fiber cables. Finally, we show that the fabricated MCF is feasible along with long-distance transmission by confirming that the XT noise performance corresponds to transmission distances of 10,000km or more.

We demonstrated 1-Tb/s-class transmissions of field-deployed large-core low-loss fiber links, which is compliant with ITU-T G.654.E, using our newly developed real-time transponder consisting of a state-of-the-art 16-nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) based digital signal processing application-specific integrated circuit (DSP-ASIC) and an indium phosphide (InP) based high-bandwidth coherent driver modulator (HB-CDM). In this field experiment, we have achieved record transmission distances of 1122km for net data-rate 1-Tb/s transmission with dual polarization-division multiplexed (PDM) 32 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals, and of 336.6 km for net data-rate 1.2-Tb/s transmission with dual PDM-64QAM signals. This is the first demonstration of applying hybrid erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and backward-distributed Raman amplifier were applied to terrestrial G.654.E fiber links. We also confirmed the stability of signal performance over field fiber transmission in wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) condition. The Q-factor fluctuations respectively were only less than or equal to 0.052dB and 0.07dB for PDM-32QAM and PDM-64QAM signals within continuous measurements for 60 minutes.

We analyze the cost of networks consisting of optical cross-connect nodes with different architectures for realizing the next generation large bandwidth networks. The node architectures include wavelength granular and fiber granular optical routing cross-connects. The network cost, capital expenditure (CapEx), involves link cost and node cost, both of which are evaluated for different scale networks under various traffic volumes. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the subsystem modular architecture with wavelength granular routing yields the highest cost effectiveness over a wide range of parameter values.

We investigate the potential of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) to realize high quality and high-power transmission. We utilize the PCF with a quasi-uniform air-hole structure, and numerically clarify that the quasi-uniform PCF can realize the effective area (Aeff) of about 500µm2 with bending loss comparable with that of a conventional single-mode fiber for telecom use by considering the quasi single-mode transmission. We then apply the quasi-uniform PCF to kW-class high-power beam delivery for the single-mode laser processing. The cross-sectional design of the PCF with the high-power delivery potential of more than 300kW·m is numerically and experimentally revealed. A 10kW single-mode beam at 1070nm is successfully delivered over a 30m-long optical fiber cable containing a fabricated PCF with single-mode class beam quality of M2 =1.7 for the first time.

Herein, we analytically derive the effective index and field distribution of the LP01 mode of a step-index N-sided regular-polygonal-core fiber. To do this, we utilize the lowest-order non-anomalous approximation of the π/N expansion. These properties are also calculated numerically and the results are compared the with approximations.

Wavelength-division multiplexing multicore fibers can transmit a large amount of information over one fiber, and high-density core allocations enable a large number of fiber lines to be deployed in limited spaces. However, inter-core crosstalk degrades the signal in these systems. This paper describes the design of a frequency interleaving scheme for a 7-core hexagonal multicore fiber. Interleaving schemes shift signal spectra between neighboring cores to reduce the signal degradation caused by inter-core crosstalk. The channel frequency allocation that most efficiently lowers the bit error rate is numerically determined in this study. The results indicate that the optimum frequency interleaving improves the allowable crosstalk ratio by 6.3 dB for QPSK signals, demonstrating its potential for improving wavelength-division multiplexing multicore fiber transmission systems.

Denser infrastructures can reduce terminal-to-infrastructure distance and thus improve the link budget in mobile communication systems. One such infrastructure, relaying can reduce the distance between the donor evolved node B (eNB) and user equipment (UE). However, conventional relaying suffers from geographical constraints, i.e., installation site, and difficulty in simultaneous transmission and reception on the same carrier frequency. Therefore, we propose a new type of fiber-optic relaying in which the antenna facing the eNB is geographically separated from the antenna facing the UE, and the two antennas are connected by an optical fiber. This structure aims to extend coverage to heavily shadowed areas. Our primary objective is to establish a design method for the proposed fiber-optic relaying in the presence of self-interference, which is the interference between the backhaul and access links, when the backhaul and access links simultaneously operate on the same carrier frequency. In this paper, we present the performance of the fiber-optic relaying in the presence of intra- and inter-cell interferences as well as self-interference. The theoretical desired-to-undesired-signal ratio for both uplink and downlink is investigated as parameters of the optical fiber length. We demonstrate the possibility of fiber-optic relaying with simultaneous transmission and reception on the same carrier frequency for the backhaul and access links. We validate the design method for the proposed fiber-optic relay system using these results.

This paper proposed an iterative soft interference canceller (IC) referred to as turbo equalizer for the self-coherent detection, and extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart based irregular low density parity check (LDPC) code optimization for the turbo equalizer in optical fiber short-reach transmissions. The self-coherent detection system is capable of linear demodulation by a single photodiode receiver. However, the self-coherent detection suffers from the interference induced by signal-signal beat components, and the suppression of the interference is a vital goal of self-coherent detection. For improving the error-free signal detection performance of the self-coherent detection, we proposed an iterative soft IC with the aid of forward error correction (FEC) decoder. Furthermore, typical FEC code is no longer appropriate for the iterative detection of the turbo equalizer. Therefore, we designed an appropriate LDPC code by using EXIT chart aided code design. The validity of the proposed turbo equalizer with the appropriate LDPC is confirmed by computer simulations.

We have comprehensively studied by numerical simulation high power transmission properties through single mode fiber for non-repeatered system application. We have clearly captured bit error rates (BERs) of digital coherent signal exhibit specific floor levels, depending on transmitter powers, due to fiber nonlinearity. If the maximum transmitter powers are defined as the powers at which BER floor levels are 1.0×10-2 without error correction, those are found to be approximately +20.4dBm, +14.8dBm and +10.6dBm, respectively, for single-channel 120Gbps DP-QPSK, DP-16QAM and DP-64QAM formats in large-core and low-loss single-mode silica fibers. In the simulations, we set fiber lengths over 100km, which is much longer than the effective fiber length, thus the results are applicable to any of long-length non-repeatered systems. We also show that the maximum transmitter powers gradually decrease in logarithmic feature with the increase of the number of DWDM channels. The channel number dependence is newly shown to be almost independent on the modulation format. The simulated results have been compared with extended Gaussian-Noise (GN) model with introducing adjustment parameters, not only to confirm the validity of the results but to explore possible new analytical modeling for non-repeatered systems.

Data rate requirements, from consumer application to automotive and aerospace grew rapidly in the last years. This led to the development of a series of communication protocols (i.e. Ethernet, PCI-Express, RapidIO and SpaceFibre), which use more than one communication lane, both to speed up data rate and to increase link reliability. Some of these protocols, such as SpaceFibre, are able to detect real-time changes in the number of active lanes and to adapt the data flow appropriately, providing a flexible solution, robust to lane failures. This results in a real time varying data path in the lower layers of the data handling system. The aim of this paper is to propose the architecture of a hardware block capable of reading a fixed number of words from a host FIFO and shaping them on a real time variable number of words equal to the number of active lanes.

The efficiency of generating four-wave mixing (FWM) from phase-modulated (PM) optical signal is studied. An analysis, that takes bit shifts occurring during fiber propagation due to group velocity differences into account, indicates that the FWM efficiency from PM signals is smaller than that from continuous waves in fiber transmission lines whose distance is longer than the walk-off length between transmitted optical signals.

A Brillouin optical correlation domain reflectometry (BOCDR) system, which can set measuring point to arbitrary distance that is aligned in a random order along an optical fiber (i.e., random accessibility), is proposed to measure dynamic strain and experimentally evaluated. This random-access system can allocate measurement bandwidth to measuring point by assigning the measurement times at each measuring point of the total number of strain measurements. This assigned number is not always equally but as necessary for plural objects with different natural frequencies. To verify the system, strain of two vibrating objects with different natural frequencies was measured by one optical fiber which is attached to those objects. The system allocated appropriate measurement bandwidth to each object and simultaneously measured dynamic strain corresponding to the vibrating objects.

The technology advancement of satellite instruments requires increasingly fast interconnection technologies, for which no standardised solution exists. SpaceFibre is the forthcoming protocol promising to overcome the limitation of its predecessor SpaceWire, offering data-rate higher than 1Gbps. However, while several implementations of the SpaceFibre IP already exist, its Network Layer is still at experimental level. This article describes the architecture of an implemented SpaceFibre Routing Switch and provides synthesis results for common FPGAs.

The needs for ultra-high speed short- to medium-reach optical fiber links beyond 100-Gbit/s is becoming larger and larger especially for intra and inter-data center applications. In recent intensity-modulated/direct-detection (IM/DD) high-speed optical transceivers with the channel bit rate of 50 and/or 100 Gbit/s, multilevel pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) is finally adopted to lower the signaling speed. To further increase the transmission capacity for the next-generation optical transceivers, various signaling techniques have been studied, especially thanks to advanced digital signal processing (DSP). In this paper, we review various signaling technologies proposed so far for short-to-medium reach applications.

A number of all-optical signal processing schemes based on nonlinear optical effects have been proposed and demonstrated for use in future photonic networks. Since various modulation formats have been developed for optical communication systems, all-optical converters between different modulation formats will be a key technology to connect networks transparently and efficiently. This paper reviews our recent works on all-optical modulation format conversion technologies in order to highlight the fundamental principles and applications in variety of all-optical signal processing schemes.

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.

Multi-static Primary Surveillance Radar (MSPSR) has recently attracted attention as a new surveillance technology for civil aviation. Using multiple receivers, Primary Surveillance Radar (PSR) detection performance can be improved by synthesizing the reflection characteristics which change due to the aircraft's position. In this paper, we report experimental results from our proposed optical-fiber-connected passive PSR system with transmit signal installed at the Sendai Airport in Japan. The signal-to noise ratio of experimental data is evaluated to verify moving target detection. In addition, we confirm the operation of the proposed system using a two-receiver setup, to resemble a conventional multi-static radar. Finally, after applying time correction, the delay of the reflected signal from a stationary target remains within the expected range.