Noise-assisted binary information transmission with VCSELs

Year: 2001

Authors: Marin F., Barbay S., Giacomelli G.

Autors Affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Firenze, and LENS, Largo E. Fermi 2, I-50125 Firenze, Italy and INFM, Unità di Firenze;
Istituto Nazionale di Ottica Applicata, Largo E. Fermi 6, 50125 Firenze, Italy

Abstract: VCSELs present peculiar features like the emission in several transverse modes and polarization fluctuations. In some critical current regions, these lasers can emit in two different states of polarization and/or transverse pattern for the same value of the pump current. The laser dynamics in such narrow bistable regions is characterized by noise-induced jumps between the two emission states. A polarization and/or a spatial filter allows one to observe the random jumps as light intensity hops. In this work. we evidence a novel phenomenon which is observed in these conditions, that we have called Noise Assisted Binary Information Transmission (NABIT): the addition of noise to the pump current up to an optimal value leads to a strong improvement of the transmission quality, measured by the Bit Error Rate. These results represent the first experimental evidence of Aperiodic Stochastic Resonance. We present analytic calculations in good agreement with the measurements. We also analyse the possible application to optical communications and compare it to a standard amplitude modulation scheme.

Journal/Review: PROCEEDINGS OF SPIE

Volume: 4286      Pages from: 195  to: 202

KeyWords: vcsel; binary transmission; polarization; stochastic process; optical communication
DOI: 10.1117/12.424807

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