Events Calendar

Partially Polarized Noise in Optical Fiber Communications System

Speaker: Curtis R. Menyuk
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department
University of Maryland Baltimore CountyAbstract: Polarization effects such as polarization-dependent loss (PDL), polarization-dependent gain (PDG), and polarization mode dispersion (PMD) can significantly impact system performance. When characterizing system performance, it is important to relate the more fundamental Q-factor to the more easily measured signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). It is also important to take into account the realistic optical and electrical filter shapes. The widely used formulae to relate Q and SNR that can be found in optical fiber communications textbooks only consider two extreme cases in which the noise is unpolarized or completely co-polarized with the signal. However, partially polarized noise can occur in systems with significant PDL. In a series of publications, members of my research group have systematically investigated the impact of partially polarized noise both theoretically and experimentally. I will summarize the results of that research in my presentation. A key finding is that the relationship between Q and SNR is not unique. As a consequence, Q can vary greatly even when the SNR does not change.Bio: Curtis R. Menyuk was born March 26, 1954. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from MIT in 1976 and the Ph.D. from UCLA in 1981. He has worked as a research associate at the University of Maryland, College Park and at Science Applications International Corporation in McLean, VA. In 1986 he became an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and he was the founding member of this department. In 1993, he was promoted to Professor. He was on partial leave from UMBC from Fall, 1996 until Fall, 2002. From 1996 – 2001, he worked part-time for the Department of Defense, co-directing the Optical Networking program at the DoD Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences in Adelphi, MD from 1999 – 2001. In 2001 – 2002, he was Chief Scientist at PhotonEx Corporation. For the last 20 years, his primary research area has been theoretical and computational studies of fiber optic communications, lasers, and nonlinear optics. He has authored or co-authored more than 210 archival journal publications as well as numerous other publications and presentations. He has also edited two books. The equations and algorithms that he and his research group at UMBC have developed to model optical fiber transmission systems are used extensively in the telecommunications industry. He is a member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the IEEE. He is a former UMBC Presidential Research Professor.Host: Alan Willner, willner@usc.edu, EEB 538, x04664

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 539

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos