1 Tb/s Transmission on a Single Wavelength Channel for Future Terabit Ethernet

We have performed an ultra-high speed transmission experiment at a data rate of 1.07 Tb/s on a single wavelength channel. In contrast to previously reported single channel transmission experiments at similar data rates, our transmission system is based exclusively on semiconductor pulse sources and does not require sophisticated schemes for RZ-pulse compression. Besides a 13.375 GHz semiconductor mode-locked laser, the 1.07 Tb/s transmitter comprises a simple scheme for moderate pulse compression in an Erbium doped fiber amplifier. We employ alternating polarization RZ-DQPSK modulation and optical time division multiplexing to generate the data signal for transmission. In the 1.07 Tb/s receiver we use a fiber based high-speed optical time-division demultiplexer which is driven by a 53.5 GHz monolithically integrated mode-locked laser diode. Further demultiplexing at lower bit rates is performed in the electrical domain after differential optical demodulation of the data signal. Taking into account a 7% overhead for forward-error correction, we achieve error-free transmission of 1 Tb/s data over a transmission length of 480-km dispersion managed fiber.