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Project title (in english):
Physics of Optoelectronic Oscillator Circuits for Communication Systems Applications*
 

Estímulo à Criatividade e à Qualidade na Actividade de InvestigaçãoProjecto distinguido pelo Programa Estímulo à Criatividade e à Qualidade na Actividade de Investigação 2009 da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian na área científica Física dos Sistemas Complexos. Investigador e instituição distinguidos: Bruno Romeira (CEOT/UALG) e Departamento de Física da UALG.  Sumário - Summary 


Publications

- A Self-Synchronized Optoelectronic Oscillator based on an RTD Photo-Detector and a Laser Diode, B. Romeira, K. Seunarine, C. N. Ironside, A. E. Kelly, J. M. L. Figueiredo, Photon. Technol. Lett., 23 (16), pp. 1148-1150, 2011. (PDF)

- Nonlinear dynamics of a Liénard delayed-feedback optoelectronic oscillator, B. Romeira, J. M. L. Figueiredo, C. N. Ironside, K. Seunarine, and J. Javaloyes, Joint conference Third International Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics and Synchronization (INDS'11) and Sixteenth International Symposium on Theoretical Electrical Engineering (ISTET'11), Session: Nonlinear Dynamics, chaos and Synchronization - 2, Klagenfurt, Austria, July 25-27, 2011. (PDF

- Clock Recovery of an Injection-Locked Resonant Tunneling Diode Microwave-Photonics Oscillator, B. Romeira, L. M. Pessoa, H. M. Salgado, S. Silva, J. M. L. Figueiredo, 13th International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON 11), paper We.C5.6, Stockholm, Sweden, June 26-30, 2011. (PDF)

- A Liénard optoelectronic oscillator with time-delayed feedback, B. Romeira, K. Seunarine, C. N. Ironside, J. Javaloyes, A. E. Kelly, J. M. L. Figueiredo, The European Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) and the European Quantum Electronics Conference (EQEC) Conference Digest, OSA Technical Digest (CD) (Optical Society of America, 2011), paper CI3.2, Munich, Germany, May 22-26, 2011. (PDF)

- Review of optoelectronic oscillators based on modelocked lasers and resonant tunneling diode optoelectronics, C. N. Ironside, M. Haji, L. Hou, J. Akbar, A. E. Kelly, K. Seunarine, B. Romeira, J. M. L. Figueiredo, International Conference on Applications of Optics and Photonics (AOP11), Proc. SPIE 8001, 80011T, Braga, Portugal, May 3-7, 2011. (PDF)

- Optoelectronic Oscillator Topologies based on Resonant Tunneling Diode Fiber Optic Links, B. Romeira, J. M. L Figueiredo, K. Seunarine, C. N. Ironside,  International Conference on Applications of Optics and Photonics (AOP11), Proc. SPIE 8001, 80011T, Braga, Portugal, May 3-7, 2011. (PDF)
 
- DC Characterization of Tunnel Diodes Under Stable Non-Oscillatory Circuit Conditions, L. Wang,  J. M. L. Figueiredo, C. N. Ironside, E. Wasige, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, 58 (2), pp. 343-347, 2011. (PDF)

 - Optical Control of a Resonant Tunneling Diode Microwave-Photonic Oscillator, B. Romeira, J. M. L. Figueiredo, C. N. Ironside, A. E. Kelly, T. J. Slight, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, vol. 22, no. 21, pp. 1610-1612, 2010. (PDF)

- Applications of laser diode sources with integrated resonant tunnelling diode technology, C. N. Ironside, B. Romeira, K. Seunarine, , A. E. Kelly, T. J Slight, and J. M. L. Figueiredo, Photonex2010 – Industry Programme, C6: Novel Sources and detectors, Telford, UK, 3-4 November 2010. (PDF)

- An Optoelectronic Oscillator based on a Resonant Tunneling Diode Photo-Detector Integrated Chip, B. Romeira, K. Seunarine, C. N. Ironside, A. E. Kelly, T. J Slight, J. M. L. Figueiredo, The 23rd Annual Meeting of the IEEE Photonics Society, paper MD4, Denver, Colorado, USA, 7-11 November, 2010. (PDF

- Microwave-Photonic Oscillators for Radio-over-Fibre Access Networks, J. M. L. Figueiredo, B. Romeira, T. J. Slight, C. N. Ironside, VIII Symposium On Enabling Optical Networks and Sensors (SEON 10), FEUP, Porto, Portugal, 2010. (PDF)

- Microwave Photonic Oscillators for Femtocellular Access Networks, B. Romeira, T. J. Slight, A. E. Kelly, C. N. Ironside, J. M L Figueiredo, 15th European Conference on Networks and Optical Communications (NOC 2010), Components and modulation strategies, Faro-Algarve, Portugal, 8-10 Junho 2010. (PDF)

- Optical injection locking of a resonant tunneling diode - optical waveguide photo-detector, Bruno Romeira, José Figueiredo, C. N. Ironside, A. E. Kelly, T. J. Slight, 15th European Conference on Integrated Optics (ECIO 2010), Cambridge, April 7-9, 2010. (PDF)

- Optoelectronic Oscillators for Communication Systems, B. Romeira, J. M. L Figueiredo, Book Chapter In: Emerging Trends in Technological Innovation, Camarinha-Matos, Luis M.; Pereira, Pedro; Ribeiro, Luis (Eds.), IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, Vol. 314, ISBN: 978-3-642-11627-8, Springer. (PDF)

- Resonant tunneling diode opto-electronic integrated circuits (Invited Paper), Charles N. Ironside, José M. L. Figueiredo, Bruno Romeira, Thomas J. Slight, Liquan Wang, Edward Wasige, Photonics West 2010, Nanotechnologies in Photonics, 7608: Quantum Sensing and Nanophotonic Devices VII, Session 4:  Quantum Structures and Devices I, Paper 7608-16. (PDF)



Summary

Since the discover, in 1961 by Edward Lorenz, what is now known as the butterfly effect, chaos became an essential research topic in biological, chemical, physical, and social sciences. With particular interest is the use of chaotic signals for information transmission. The use of the noise-like appearance of chaotic carriers gives a very efficient way to mask messages, and is considered a promising method to improve security in communications. Communication systems using chaotic optical carriers allow implementing steganography techniques at the physical level, which improves substantially the security of the software current encryption techniques. In such systems the receiver circuit, an identical version of the transmitter circuit, is synchronized with the chaotic emission to allow message decoding.

The most promising ways of producing broadband chaotic signals employ semiconductor lasers as sources of chaotic optical carriers. Although semiconductor laser systems are, in general, dynamical stable, instabilities can be induced by perturbing their operation either through direct current modulation, optical injection, optical feedback, or delayed optoelectronic feedback. Such perturbations correspond to the addition of new degrees of freedom to the systems and are widely proposed as methods of broadband chaotic optical signals generation. However, the complexity of most of theses systems, either hybrid or monolithic, makes practical realization very challenging.

Following recent reports on chaotic dynamics in a new type of optoelectronic circuit, we propose an alternative laser diode system configuration capable of chaos generation based on the integration of a double-barrier quantum well (DBQW) resonant tunnelling diode (RTD) with a communications semiconductor laser diode (LD), the RTD-LD circuit/system. Such system takes advantage of the combination of RTD and LD intrinsic nonlinear dynamics, leading to substantial reduction of transmitter and receiver circuits’ complexity and less restrictive operation conditions. The DBQW-RTD is a nonlinear nanoelectronic device capable to operate at room temperature as a high frequency voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), that shows wideband negative differential resistance allowing ultra-broadband electrical gain (currently up to 831 GHz), that when properly perturbed shows extremely complex non-linear dynamics.
 
Here we propose to investigate the physics of RTD-LD systems that leads to a rich complex dynamics, including the Feigenbaum, the intermittent and the quasi-periodic routes to chaos, which are related to the period doubling, saddle-node, and Hopf bifurcations, respectively. Preliminary results indicate this complex system can be an alternative to proposed optoelectronic chaotic generator systems. The investigation will comprehend the physics that leads to the system nonlinear dynamics and synchronization between two identical circuits, one acting as transmitter and the other as receiver.
 
Since the RTD-LD system is completely compatible with current optical communication systems, and because the combination of RTD nonlinear characteristics with LD dynamics reduces significantly operation conditions constraints of the laser diode necessary to produce high-dimensional chaos, it leads to straightforward chaos based optical communication systems implementation. The investigation will also allow a deeper insight into the theory of a new category of optoelectronic complex systems.
 
Research team
Bruno Romeira (CEOT/UALG, DF/UALG)
José Figueiredo (CEOT/UALG, DF/UALG)
 
Additional Research Unit
Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, University of Glasgow
Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, IMSE-CNM, Universidad de Sevilla

url: http://w3.ualg.pt/~jlongras/R/RTD-OEC.html