464 CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 8, No. 5 / May 10, 2010
Study of FSK/IM orthogonal modulation system with
optical Manchester-coded payload
Rui Zhou (±±± bbb)
∗
, Xiangjun Xin ($$$), Qi Zhang (ÜÜÜ lll),
Kun Zhao (ëëë ÃÃÃ), Tonggang Zhao (ëëëÓÓÓfff), and Chongxiu Yu ({{{DDD)
Institute of Information Photonics and Optical Communications, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Beijing 100876, China
∗
E-mail: zhourui85@gmail.com
Received September 18, 2009
We study the performance of an orthogonal modulation system with frequency-shift keying (FSK) label
and optical Manchester-coded (MC) payload. Simulation result shows that by introducing an optical MC
payload, the available extinction ratio (ER) value of a FSK and intensity modulation (IM) orthogonal
mo dulation system can be improved from 5 to 9 dB for system optimization, exhibiting great advantages
over the traditional non-return-to-zero (NRZ) payload. Besides, the bit error rate (BER) characteristics
of both label and payload show a more remarkable advantage than that of NRZ coding, verifying itself as
a p erfect candidate for the payload coding method in orthogonal modulation systems.
OCIS co des: 060.2330, 060.4080.
doi: 10.3788/COL20100805.0464.
In recent years, optical burst switching (OBS)
[1]
and
optical label switching (OLS)
[2]
technologies have been
studied as promising solutions for optical packet switch-
ing (OPS). In OLS networks, the low-bit-rate optical
label contains routing information and propagates to-
gether with data payload. At each intermediate node,
the OLS router can transparently forward the payload in-
formation directly in the optical layer based on the label
information, which avoids the costly optical-electrical-
optical (OEO) conversion of the high-speed data.
Several labeling methods have been proposed and
demonstrated as possible solutions
[3]
. Among them, an
orthogonal modulation method named optical frequency-
shift keying/intensity modulation (FSK/IM) has been
regarded as a feasible scheme due to its compact spec-
trum, simple label swapping, and remarkable scalability
to high bit rates
[4−8]
. However, in FSK/IM systems FSK
label introduces crosstalk to the intensity modulated pay-
load, thus limiting the scalability of the labeling scheme
and reducing the system modulation performance
[5−7]
.
Manchester coding, also referred to as bi-phase coding,
has been experimentally demonstrated to reduce such
crosstalk
[9,10]
, for which the data signal is electrically
encoded by an encoder before adding it to the optical
carrier by intensity modulator.
Recently, a novel method has been proposed for the
direct generation of Manchester encoded optical signal,
through a dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (DD-
MZM)
[11]
. In this case no extra encoder is needed, which
simplifies the system and reduces the total cost. How-
ever, the optical Manchester-coded (MC) signal has not
yet been used as high-speed payload in OLS systems. In
this letter, we discuss the feasibility of introducing opti-
cal Manchester coding in a FSK/IM orthogonal modula-
tion system, achieving FSK label with optically encoded
Manchester payload. Simulation results prove that by
adjusting the modulation voltage of DD-MZM, a good
trade-off between lab el and payload performances can be
achieved at high extinction ratio (ER), without much bit
error rate (BER) penalty of payload or label.
Optical Manchester coding can be obtained by driv-
ing the two arms of a DD-MZM with electrical non-
return-to-zero (NRZ) data and an electrical clock signal,
respectively, and adjusting the modulation voltage ap-
propriately to make an exclusive OR (XOR) operation
between the NRZ and clock signals
[11]
. The principle
of Manchester coding is to use either rise or fall of the
signal in the middle of each bit perio d ‘T ’ to represent
‘0’ or ‘1’, as shown in Fig. 1.
Manchester (split phase) coding has been widely stud-
ied in optical and electrical communication systems due
to some of its intrinsic characteristics.
1) Compared with the usual NRZ code, its main ad-
vantages are easy timing extraction, zero direct current
(DC) content, and no laser pattern dependency. The
laser pattern dependency is caused by the possible long
strings of ‘1’s or ‘0’s and degrades the receiver sensitivity
through variations in laser power of ‘1’ level
[12]
.
2) Manchester coding greatly suppresses the crosstalk
in subcarrier multiplexing (SCM) signaling
[13]
and the
spectrum overlapping between label and payload in the
FSK/IM orthogonal modulation scheme
[10]
through spec-
trum shaping.
Also, proper decoding methods of MC signal have been
proposed to improve the system performance.
1) A weighted pro cessing of the two bit halves of
Manchester data brings a large BER improvement for the
data corrupted by multiplicative noise (signal-dependent
Fig. 1. (a) Manchester coding; (b) Manchester and NRZ.
1671-7694/2010/050464-04
c
° 2010 Chinese Optics Letters