Modulation format identification in fiber
communications using single dynamical
node-based photonic reservoir computing
QIANG CAI,
1,†
YA GUO,
1,2,†
PU LI,
1,3,4,
*ADONIS BOGRIS,
5
K. ALAN SHORE,
6
YAMEI ZHANG,
7
AND YUNCAI WANG
3
1
Key Laboratory of Advanced Transducers and Intelligent Control System, Ministry of Education, Taiyuan University of Technology,
Taiyuan 030024, China
2
School of Electronics and Information, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China
3
School of Information Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China
4
Key Laboratory of Specialty Fiber Optics and Optical Access Networks, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China
5
Department of Informatics and Computer Engineering, University of West Attica, Athens 12243, Greece
6
School of Electronic Engineering, Bangor University, Wales LL57 1UT, UK
7
Key Laboratory of Radar Imaging and Microwave Photonics, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Nanjing 210016, China
*Corresponding author: lipu8603@126.com
Received 9 September 2020; revised 12 November 2020; accepted 13 November 2020; posted 18 November 2020 (Doc. ID 409114);
published 24 December 2020
We present a simple approach based on photonic reservoir computing (P-RC) for modulation format identifi-
cation (MFI) in optical fiber communications. Here an optically injected semiconductor laser with self-delay
feedback is trained with the representative features from the asynchronous amplitude histograms of modulation
signals. Numerical simulations are conducted for three widely used modulation formats (on–off keying, differ-
ential phase-shift keying, and quadrature amplitude modulation) for various tran smission situations where the
optical signal-to-noise ratio varies from 12 to 26 dB, the chromatic dispersion varies from −500 to 500 ps/nm, and
the differential group delay varies from 0 to 20 ps. Under these situations, final simulation results demonstrate
that this technique can efficiently identify all those modulation formats with an accuracy of >95% after opti-
mizing the control parameters of the P-RC layer such as the injection strength, feedback strength, bias current,
and frequency detuning. The proposed technique utilizes very simple devices and thus offers a resource-efficient
alternative approach to MFI.
© 2020 Chinese Laser Press
https://doi.org/10.1364/PRJ.409114
1. INTRODUCTION
Fiber-optic communication systems are expected to be capable
of adaptively adjusting various transmission parameters such as
modulation formats, line rates, and spectrum assignments,
based on the varying channel conditions and traffic demands
in order to maximize the spectral and energy efficiencies [1–4].
The dynamic variation of transmission parameters imposes new
requirements for the optical receivers in such elastic optical net-
works (EONs). To demodulate the transmission signal at the
digital receivers, one must know the type of modulation format.
Consequently, correct identification of modulation formats is
rather crucial for high-quality communication [5,6].
The feature-based (FB) approach is an effective way to
achieve modulation format identification (MFI) [7–11], carried
out by using different tools to analyze the associated feature
parameters from transmission signals. For instance, Nandi et al.
completed an identification of amplitud e modulation (AM), fre-
quency modulation (FM), M-ary amplitude shift-keying
(MASK), and M-ary frequency-shift keying (MFSK) signals
by analyzing their instantaneous phase and frequency informa-
tion using the decision tree algorithm [9]. Park et al. realized the
identification of MASK, MFSK, and M-ary phase-shift keying
(MPSK) signals by employing the support vector machine to
analyze the frequency features of modulated signals [10].
Khan et al. confirmed that using artificial neural network (ANN)
can achieve the identification of six widely used modulation for-
mats [including on-off keying (OOK), differential phase-shift
keying (DPSK), M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation
(MQAM), etc.] through analyzing their amplitude features [11].
Among them, ANN-based MFI technologies especially at-
tract great attention due to their enormous calculation power
and high accuracy. Typically, Wong et al. identified commonly
Research Article
Vol. 9, No. 1 / January 2021 / Photonics Research B1
2327-9125/21/0100B1-08 Journal © 2021 Chinese Laser Press