High-speed Synchronisation for Optical Packet Networks

Optical regeneration, high-speed synchronisation, OTDM packet network, timing jitter, clock recovery Key Results: Results show serious limitations in the minimum level of jitter tolerable by high-speed regeneration. For 40Gbit/s OTDM (Optical Time Division Multiplexing) transmission the tolerable level of jitter to maintain error-free transmission, is 1.5ps for synchronous regeneration and 1ps for asynchronous regeneration. How does the work advance the state-of-the-art?: An analytical expression to evaluate the BER (Bit Error Rate) for 3R regeneration is obtained for the first time, as a function of input data signal and clock signal jitter statistical characteristics. The statistical model developed is applied to analyse different packet regeneration architectures and compare their performance. Motivation (Problems addressed): Accumulation of timing jitter due to fibre nonlinearities imposes a limit on the achievable bit rate distance product in high-speed OTDM packet transmission. Optical 3R regeneration (signal Re-shaping Re-timing and Re-amplifying) has been shown experimentally to allow to enhance the error-free transmission distance [1]. Different solutions have been proposed in literature to perform optical 3R regeneration for high-speed OTDM packet transmission. However the design of high-speed optical 3R regenerators requires analytical tools to assess and quantify the effect of timing jitter on the process of optical OTDM regeneration.