Digital coherent receivers have gained significant attention in the last decade. The reason for this is that coherent detection, along with digital signal processing (DSP) allows for substantial increase of the channel capacity by employing advanced detection techniques. In this paper, we first review coherent detection technique employed in the receiver as well as the required receiver structure. Subsequently, we describe the core part of the receiver — DSP algorithms — that are used for data processing. We cover all basic elements of a conventional coherent receiver DSP chain: deskew, orthonormaliation, chromatic dispersion compensation/nonlinear compensation, resampling and timing recovery, polarization demultiplexing and equalization, frequency and phase recovery, digital demodulation. We also describe novel subsystems of a digital coherent receiver: modulation format recognition and impairment mitigation via expectation maximization, which may gain popularity with increasing importance of autonomous networks.

Triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011, the authors have been studying a resilient network whose key element is a movable and deployable ICT resource unit. The resilient network needs a function of robust and immediate connection to a wide area network active outside the damaged area. This paper proposes an application of digital coherent technology for establishing optical interconnection between the movable ICT resource unit and existing network nodes through a photonic network, rapidly, easily and with the minimum in manual work. We develop a prototype of a 100Gbit/s digital coherent transponder which is installable to our movable and deployable ICT resource unit and experimentally confirm the robust and immediate connection by virtue of the plug and play function.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an indispensable tool for low visibility ground surface measurement owing to its robustness against optically harsh environments such as adverse weather or darkness. As a leading-edge approach for SAR image processing, the coherent change detection (CCD) technique has been recently established; it detects a temporal change in the same region according to the phase interferometry of two complex SAR images. However, in the case of general damage assessment following an earthquake or mudslide, the technique requires not only the detection of surface change but also an assessment for height change quantity, such as occurs with a building collapse or road subsidence. While the interferometric SAR (InSAR) approach is suitable for height assessment, it is basically unable to detect change if only a single observation is made. To address this issue, we previously proposed a method of estimating height change according to phase interferometry of the coherence function obtained by dual band-divided SAR images. However, the accuracy of this method significantly degrades in noisy situations owing to the use of the phase difference. To resolve this problem, this paper proposes a novel height estimation method by exploiting the frequency characteristic of coherence phases obtained by each SAR image multiply band-divided. The results obtained from numerical simulations and experimental data demonstrate that our proposed method offers accurate height change estimation while avoiding degradation in the spatial resolution.

Two types of low-coherence millimeter-wave sources for photonic millimeter-wave ellipsometry are compared. A broadband signal (125-GHz bandwidth) or a narrowband one (0.5-GHz bandwidth) is used to measure the complex relative dielectric constants of purified water, and the narrowband signal is revealed to be suitable for accurate measurement.

In this paper, the diversity multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) analysis of the non-coherent block-fading multiple antenna channel which uses a training-based channel estimation scheme at asymptotically high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) is extended to finite SNRs. This extension is performed for a single input multiple output (SIMO) maximal ratio combining (MRC) scheme. This analysis at finite SNRs is more useful because in practice, the training schemes operate at finite SNRs and their impact on DMT is more relevant at such SNRs. We show the non-applicability of the asymptotically high SNR relation, given by Zheng, to finite SNRs. We also show the equivalence of two existing training-based channel estimation schemes for any SIMO system, and using one of these, we compute the achievable finite-SNR DMT of the non-coherent SIMO-MRC scheme for two modes of the training scheme. We analyze the achievable finite-SNR DMT for different durations of training, modes of the training scheme, and SNRs. We show that the impact of the mode of the training scheme on finite-SNR DMT decreases as SNR increases. We also show that at asymptotically high SNRs, the achievable DMT in both modes of the SIMO-MRC scheme is equal to that of the non-coherent SIMO channel, as derived by Zheng.

In this paper, we propose a time and memory efficient Ultra Wide Band Short Range Radar (UWB SRR) system for measuring relative target velocities of up to 150km/hr. First, for the proposed detector, we select the required design parameters for good performance. The parameters are the number of coherent integrations, non-coherent integrations, and FFT points. The conventional detector uses a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to extract the range and velocity of the target simultaneously. Therefore, it requires high computation effort, high FFT processing time, and a huge amount of memory. However, the proposed pulse radar detector first decides the target range and then computes the target velocity using FFT sequentially for the decided range index. According to our theoretical and simulation analyses, the FFT processing time and the memory requirement are reduced compared to those of the conventional method. Finally, we show that the detection performance of the proposed detector is superior to that of the conventional detector in a background of Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN).

In order to execute coherent Doppler processing in a high range-rate scenario, whether it is for detection, estimation or imaging, range walk embedded in target return should be compensated first. In case of a bistatic radar geometry where a transmitter, a receiver and a target can be all moving, the extent of range walk depends on their relative positions and velocities. This paper presents a coherent Doppler processing algorithm to achieve target detection and Doppler frequency estimation of a target under a bistatic radar geometry. This algorithm is based on the assumption that a target has constant Doppler frequency during a coherent processing interval (CPI). Thus, we first show under what condition the assumption could be valid. We next develop an algorithm, along with its implementation procedures where the region of range walk, called a window, is manipulated. Finally, the performance of a proposed algorithm is examined through simulations.

There is a relentless push for cost and size reduction in optical transmitters and receivers for fiber-optic links. Monolithically integrated optical chips in InP and Si may be a way to leap ahead of this trend. We discuss uses of integration technology to accomplish various telecommunications functions.

We propose a coherent optical and radio seamless network concept that allows broadband access without deployment of additional optical fibers within an optical fiber dead zone while enhancing network resilience to disasters. Recently developed radio-over-fiber (RoF) and digital coherent detection technologies can seamlessly convert between optical and radio signals. A millimeter-wave radio with a capacity greater than 10 Gb/s and high-speed digital signal processing is feasible for this purpose. We provide a preliminary demonstration of a high-speed, W-band (75–110 GHz) radio that is seamlessly connected to an optical RoF transmitter using a highly accurate optical modulation technique to stabilize the center frequencies of radio signals. Using a W-band digital receiver with a sensitivity of -37 dBm, we successfully transmitted an 18.6 Gb/s quadrature-phase-shift-keying signal through both air and an optical fiber.

In order to improve the detection performance in passive millimeter-wave (PMMW) imaging, a new method forwarding a null in the direction of human body and objects is proposed. The forward-nulling PMMW imaging using a dielectric tube occupied by cooling water placed near the focus line of a parabolic cylinder are performed. It is shown experimentally that the contrast between human body and conducting objects such as a conducting plate and a conducting sphere is improved by the presence of the cooling dielectric tube and parabolic cylinder.

We propose and demonstrate a simple and novel technique to accelerate the carrier injection/depletion processes in an RSOA by applying instantaneous injection/depletion currents at the transition edges of the modulation signal to force the carrier density to respond at a high speed and, as a result, to increase its modulation speed. We theoretically and experimentally show that, by using the proposed technique, it is possible to obtain 5 Gbit/s optical BPSK signal from an RSOA having a modulation bandwidth of only 0.9 GHz.

To reconstruct low-resolution facial photographs which are in focus and without motion blur, a novel algorithm based on local similarity preserving is proposed. It is based on the theories of local manifold learning. The innovations of the new method include mixing point-based entropy and Euclidian distance to search for the nearest points, adding point-to-patch degradation model to restrict the linear weights and compensating the fusing patch to keep energy coherence. The compensation reduces the algorithm dependence on training sets and keeps the luminance of reconstruction constant. Experiments show that our method can effectively reconstruct 1612 images with the magnification of 88 and the 3224 facial photographs in focus and without motion blur.

A new direction of arrival (DOA) estimation method is introduced with arbitrary array geometry when uncorrelated and coherent signals coexist. The DOAs of uncorrelated signals are first estimated via subspace-based high resolution DOA estimation technique. Then a matrix that only contains the information of coherent signals can be formulated by eliminating the contribution of uncorrelated signals. Finally a subspace block sparse reconstruction approach is taken for DOA estimations of the coherent signals.

We investigate electronic mitigation of linear and nonlinear fibre impairments and compare various digital signal processing techniques, including electronic dispersion compensation (EDC), single-channel back-propagation (SC-BP) and back-propagation with multiple channel processing (MC-BP) in a nine-channel 112 Gb/s PM-mQAM (m=4,16) WDM system, for reaches up to 6,320 km. We show that, for a sufficiently high local dispersion, SC-BP is sufficient to provide a significant performance enhancement when compared to EDC, and is adequate to achieve BER below FEC threshold. For these conditions we report that a sampling rate of two samples per symbol is sufficient for practical SC-BP, without significant penalties.

We present the recovery of 2.5 Gb/s synchronous 16-point quadrature amplitude modulation data in real-time for an linewidth-times-symbol-duration ratio of 0.00048 after transmission over 1.6 km standard single mode fiber.

The problem of estimating the nominal angles and angular spreads of multiple coherently distributed (CD) sources in a symmetric uniform linear array (ULA) is considered. Based on structure of the subarrays consisting of two opposite sensors relative to the center of a ULA and the rank reduction (RARE) concept, the proposed algorithm is able to estimate the nominal angles without any angular signal density model assumptions of the sources. Using the estimated nominal angles, the angular spread of each source is then obtained using a one-dimensional (1-D) distributed source parameter estimator (DSPE).

Over 100 Gbit/s/ch high-speed optical transmission is required to achieve the high capacity networks that can meet future demands. The coherent receiver, which is expected to yield high frequency utilization, is a promising means of achieving such high-speed transmission. However, it requires a high-speed Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) because the received signal bandwidth would be over several tens or hundreds of GHz. To solve this problem, we propose a band-divided receiver structure for wideband optical signals. In the receiver, received wideband signals are divided into a number of narrow band signals without any guard band. We develop a band-divided receiver prototype and evaluate it in an experiment. In addition, we develop a real-time OFDM demodulator on an FPGA board that implements 1.5 GS/s ADCs. We demonstrate that the band-divided receiver prototype with its real-time OFDM demodulator and 1.5 GS/s ADC can demodulate single polarization 12 Gbit/s OFDM signals in real-time.

A differential input non-coherent BPSK receiver for the UWB-IR communication, based on threshold detection, has been presented in this paper. The chip can recover BPSK modulated Gaussian monocycle pulses (GMP), along with its first derivative, at a data rate of 500 Mb/s. No clock reception is required, as the receiver recovers data based on the relative phase of the two simultaneously received inputs. While retrieving the data, it consumes a power of 63 mW from a supply voltage of 1.8 V. A shunt-peaked narrow band amplifier, matched to the input antenna, is used to amplify the received GMP. Wireless data have been successfully recovered using a pair of horn antennas at a distance of 6 cm. The chip, developed in a 180 nm CMOS technology, occupies a die area of 3.4 mm2. The receiver is suitable for the non-coherent (self-synchronized) UWB-IR communication.

We review our recent work on ultra-long-haul wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) transmission with high spectral efficiency (SE) employing tight pre-filtering and multi-symbol detection. We start the discussion with a theoretical evaluation of the SE limit of pre-filtered modulation in optical fiber communication systems. We show that pre-filtering induced symbol correlation generates a modulation with memory and thus, a higher SE limit than that of the original memory-less modulation. We also investigate the merits of utilizing the pre-filtering induced symbol correlation with multi-symbol detection to achieve high SE transmission. We demonstrate transoceanic WDM transmission of a pre-filtered polarization division multiplexed return-to-zero quaternary phased shift keying (PDM-RZ-QPSK) modulation format with multi-symbol detection, achieving 419% SE which is higher than the SE limit of the original memory-less PDM-RZ-QPSK format.

To meet the increasing demand to expand wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission capacity, ultrahigh spectral density coherent optical transmission employing multi-level modulation formats has attracted a lot of attention. In particular, ultrahigh multi-level quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) has an enormous advantage as regards expanding the spectral efficiency to 10 bit/s/Hz and even approaching the Shannon limit. We describe fundamental technologies for ultrahigh spectral density coherent QAM transmission and present experimental results on polarization-multiplexed 256 QAM coherent optical transmission using heterodyne and homodyne detection with a frequency-stabilized laser and an optical phase-locked loop technique. In this experiment, Raman amplifiers are newly adopted to decrease the signal power, which can reduce the fiber nonlinearity. As a result, the power penalty was reduced from 5.3 to 2.0 dB. A 64 Gbit/s data signal is successfully transmitted over 160 km with an optical bandwidth of 5.4 GHz.