High PDG-OA-Based MLPolSK Modulation for Spectral Efficient Free-Space Optical Communication

This paper proposes multilevel linear polarization shift keying (MLPolSK) modulation, based on a high polarization-dependent gain optical amplifier (PDG-OA), for spectral efficient free-space optical (FSO) communication. At the transmitter end, multiple linear states of polarization (SOPs) are adopted, and different SOPs are mapped for MLPolSK modulation according to the PDG-OA. First, in the receiver, scintillation is effectively mitigated by a polarization-independent semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) with gain saturation. Next, various SOPs are transformed into different signal intensity levels by an OA with high PDG characteristics. Finally, transformed signal is directly detected by a single photodiode (PD) with multilevel-thresholds decision. The feasibility of the proposed technique is evaluated experimentally using a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA), with a high PDG-up to 20 dB. A Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM)-based fading simulator is used to accommodate lognormal distribution simulated turbulence effects into experiments. Experimental results illustrate that multilevel linear SOPs can be distinguished effectively by the proposed technique. Consequently, the MLPolSK detection is simplified, and the spectral efficiency (SE) is improved by up to 2 bit/s/Hz with effective scintillation mitigation in FSO.