Coding for Optical communications In the Nonlinear regime

Project Information

COIN

Grant agreement ID: 676448

DOI

10.3030/676448

Project closed

EC signature date 11 December 2015

Start date 1 March 2016

End date 29 February 2020

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 1 073 894,40

EU contribution

€ 1 073 894,40

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - COIN (Coding for Optical communications In the Nonlinear regime)

Reporting period: 2018-03-01 to 2020-02-29

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The question of how to ensure the availability of ubiquitous, high-capacity, low-delay, resilient and secure digital infrastructure, likely to transform and improve people’s lives, underpinned COIN, focusing on how to achieve the increases in the usable optical fibre bandwidths, per wavelength modulation rates as well as spectral efficiency. The growth of social media, video and new services continues at 40% per year and the capacity to carry this data is lagging behind. This presents dramatic consequences to the economy, rationing demand or raising prices. The project COIN aimed to close this gap due to nonlinear properties of the optical fibre, and to develop nonlinear modulation, coding, and detection methods, tailored to the nonlinear channel, to dramatically improve the data throughput of future communication networks. The COIN research focused on one of society’s greatest technical challenges and economic drivers with impact on knowledge, economy, society and people as well as business and government activities.
between the collaborators to promote career opportunities of the COIN researchers in ICT, generating new types of key expertise and human capital for the European Research Area.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

WP1 – Uncoded Nonlinear Transmission Schemes
The research focused on the nonlinear Fourier transform (NLFT) and nonlinear frequency division multiplexity (NFDM), forming the nonlinear analogue of wavelength division multiplexing. NLFT is a method for transforming a signal to a domain where it is unaffected by optical fibre nonlinearity, and can be detected and recovered without distortion. The research focussed on single polarisation transmission to enable the comparison of the achievable information rates (AIR) between WDM and NFDM transmission systems. The results can be applied to design a high performance dual polarization NFDM transmission scheme, potentially increasing both the achievable capacity and distances.

WP2 – Coding and Coded Modulation Schemes for Nonlinear Transmission
A novel concept was developed of implementing the optical fibre communication system as an end-to-end deep neural network, which includes the complete chain of transmitter, receiver and channel. This allows the transceiver functions to be optimized in a single end-to-end process and has the potential to enable optimal end-to-end system performance. Such systems have a tremendous potential as communication channels, for example, optical fibre, where the optimum transceiver is unknown, or its implementation is computationally prohibitive. The new concepts were introduced and experimentally verified for different transceiver designs based on feedforward and recurrent neural networks and showed the benefits from their implementation in comparisons to different classical digital signal processing schemes. A novel method for end-to-end fibre optic system optimization based on collected data from measurements, was proposed and experimentally implemented, unlocking the potential of fully learnable systems. This research forms the important foundations on the application of deep learning in future optical fibre communication systems.

In parallel, capacity achieving distribution, embedding the data into into the imaginary part of the nonlinear discrete spectrum, with a probabilistic shaping for an NFT-based transmission system was found to increase the data rate by a factor of 2.

WP3 – Transmission Regime and Experimental Verification
Different experimental schemes developed included a fully versatile optical fibre recirculating testbed for networks and systems research, a full nonlinear-Fourier-Transform (NFT) based transmission system as well as a short-reach system with square-law detection used by neural-network based transceivers.

WP4 – Project Management & Doctoral Training
Activities covered all aspects of project monitoring, reporting, financial and contractual administration in accordance with the Commission’s rules, ensuring effective communication within the consortium and implementation of the project governance decisions.

WP5 – Exploitation, Dissemination & Outreach
WP5 focused on effective communication, dissemination, and result exploitation activities and their presentation to (1) academic collaborators and (2) industrial partners increasing awareness and maximising outcomes, via 3) international conferences and journals and (4) social media inc website and twitter account.

WP6 – Ethics requirements
All the ethics deliverables were submitted with project activities compliant with the Ethics requirements.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project achieved multiple advances on the state of the art as described above in the quest to achieve increased capacity of optical transmission systems operating in the nonlinear regime for different network applications. Firstly, a novel method for end-to-end fibre optic system optimization was proposed and implemented, unlocking the potential of fully learnable systems, forming the important foundations on the application of deep learning in future optical fibre communication systems. Secondly, major new understanding defining nonlinear communications was achieved, with the potential to increase both capacity and distances. Thirdly, a probabilistic shaping scheme, a means of coding the data in tailored to the nonlinear channel, has been shown to increase the data rate by a factor of 2, compared to an unshaped system. Finally, state-of-the-art experimental testbeds for transmission and networks research has been developed for a range of applications covering short-reach to long-haul communication applications. The PhD training programme maximised the unique synergy between the collaborators to promote opportunities of the COIN researchers in ICT, generating key expertise and human capital for the European Research Area.

- In terms of wider societal implications – advances in communications and infrastructure will improve productivity and, profitability. Optical networks form the core of the communications infrastructure also control all other infrastructure – transport (rail, roads, air traffic) and utilities – their reliability and resilience and the inter-operability is key to national wellbeing, security and safety. Every sector of the population and Government/private agencies is likely to be affected. there are enormous cost-savings to be made from the provision of flexible, secure, high-bandwidth connectivity, as well as potential improvements in productivity through availability of broadband digital services for home-based working and education. General public inc (i) children, (ii) the elderly, (iii) patients and disabled, (iv) rural communities, the possibility of having ubiquitous access to bandwidth with low-delay will enable the transformation of people’s lives at every stage of development: (i) children to access educational services, courses, university laboratories and expert teaching at a push of a broadband button, (ii) the elderly & disabled – to allow real-time monitoring and remote healthcare for housebound individual (iii) patients and disabled – access to leading specialists, tests and even treatment; (iv) rural communities – to reduce the isolation and improve the connectivity will help reduce concentration of population in urban areas and improve prosperity.

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