Light-Emitting Diodes. (Monographs in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.) By A. A. Bergh and P. J. Dean. Pp. viii+591. (Clarendon: Oxford; Oxford University: London, 1976.) £22.

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Light-emitting diodes

Modal decomposition of light has been known for a long time, applied mostly to pattern recognition. With the commercialization of liquid-crystal devices, digital holography as an enabling tool has become accessible to all, and with it all-digital tools for the decomposition of light have finally come of age. We review recent advances in unravelling the properties of light, from the modal structure of laser beams to decoding the information stored in orbital angular momentum (OAM)-carrying fields. We show application of these tools to fiber lasers, solid-state lasers, and structured light created in the laboratory by holographic laser beam shaping. We show by experimental implementation how digital holograms may be used to infer the intensity, phase, wavefront, Poynting vector, polarization, and OAM density of some unknown optical field. In particular, we outline how virtually all the previous ISO-standard beam diagnostic techniques may be readily replaced with all-digital equivalents, thus paving the way for unravelling of light in real time. Such tools are highly relevant to the in situ analysis of laser systems, to mode division multiplexing as an emerging tool in optical communication, and for quantum information processing with entangled photons.

Creation and detection of optical modes with spatial light modulators

The field of visible light communications (VLC) has gained significant interest over the last decade, in both fibre and free-space embodiments. In fibre systems, the availability of low cost plastic optical fibre (POF) that is compatible with visible data communications has been a key enabler. In free-space applications, the availability of hundreds of THz of the unregulated spectrum makes VLC attractive for wireless communications. This paper provides an overview of the recent developments in VLC systems based on gallium nitride (GaN) light-emitting diodes (LEDs), covering aspects from sources to systems. The state-of-the-art technology enabling bandwidth of GaN LEDs in the range of >400 MHz is explored. Furthermore, advances in key technologies, including advanced modulation, equalisation, and multiplexing that have enabled free-space VLC data rates beyond 10 Gb/s are also outlined.

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A review of gallium nitride LEDs for multi-gigabit-per-second visible light data communications

We present a novel optical transmission system to experimentally demonstrate the possibility of mode division multiplexing. Its key components are mode multiplexer and demultiplexer based on a programmable liquid crystal on silicon panel, a prototype few-mode fiber, and a 4x4 multiple input multiple output algorithm processing the information of two polarization diversity coherent receivers. Using this system, we transmit two 100Gb/s PDM-QPSK data streams modulated on two different modes of the prototype few-mode fiber. After 40km, we obtain Q2-factors about 1dB above the limit for forward error correction.

Two mode transmission at 2x100Gb/s, over 40km-long prototype few-mode fiber, using LCOS-based programmable mode multiplexer and demultiplexer

Gallium nitride (GaN) light-emitting-diode (LED) technology has been the revolution in modern lighting. In the last decade, a huge global market of efficient, long-lasting, and ubiquitous white light sources has developed around the inception of the Nobel-prize-winning blue GaN LEDs. Today, GaN optoelectronics is developing beyond solid-state lighting, leading to new and innovative devices, e.g., for microdisplays, being the core technology for future augmented reality and visualization, as well as point light sources for optical excitation in communications, imaging, and sensing. This explosion of applications is driven by two main directions: the ability to produce very small GaN LEDs (micro-LEDs and nano-LEDs) with high efficiency and across large areas, in combination with the possibility to merge optoelectronic-grade GaN micro-LEDs with silicon microelectronics in a hybrid approach. GaN LED technology is now even spreading into the realm of display technology, which has been occupied by organic LEDs and liquid crystal displays for decades. In this review, the technological transition toward GaN micro- and nanodevices beyond lighting is discussed including an up-to-date overview on the state of the art.

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Beyond solid-state lighting: Miniaturization, hybrid integration, and applications of GaN nano- and micro-LEDs

In this letter, a visible light communication link is analyzed that employs a white phosphorescent light emitting diode (LED) as transmitter and a p-i-n photodiode combined with optical filter as receiver. Four- and eight-level pulse amplitude modulation is used for data transmission. The link is not only limited by a rather small bandwidth of ~20 MHz of the LED, but also its nonlinearity becomes a problem when the modulation index exceeds ~60%. It is shown that a receiver with a decision feedback equalizer (DFE) with nonlinear Volterra feed-forward section up to the second order can efficiently compensate effects of nonlinearity of the transmitting LED and performs up to 5 dB better in terms of optical power than using a standard DFE.

Compensation of a VLC Phosphorescent White LED Nonlinearity by Means of Volterra DFE

Successful 54 Gbit/s on–off keying (OOK) transmission over 2.2 km of multimode OM4 fibre is demonstrated. The decisive advantages of the single mode over multimode vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) in transmission experiments are shown.

https://ietresearch.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/el.2015.4264

54 Gbit/s OOK transmission using single-mode VCSEL up to 2.2 km MMF

A theoretical model for transmission of advanced modulation schemes [pulse amplitude modulation (PAM), carrierless amplitude-phase (CAP), and discrete multitone (DMT)] in visible light communications (VLC) link using white phosphorescent LEDs is presented. The model extends and adapts the Randel et al. , framework for advanced modulation format transmission in intensity-modulated direct-detection for the VLC channel. The main contributions are: CAP modulation, effect of transmit signal spectral shaping in PAM and CAP, analytical calculation of crest factor for CAP, and analysis of inter-symbol and cross-carrier interference due to an insufficient cyclic-prefix in DMT. Based on this model, the impact of blue filtering at the receiver is studied in the context of spectrally efficient modulation formats. The results indicate that blue filtering has a marginal effect on the performance for all the investigated modulation formats, while PAM with decision feedback equalizer shows the best performance. Without blue filtering, slightly higher data rates can be achieved, but at a price of extensive signal processing.

Advanced Modulation Formats in Phosphorous LED VLC Links and the Impact of Blue Filtering

Oxide-confined vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) with anti-waveguiding AlAs-rich core presently attract a lot of attention. Anti-waveguiding cavity enables the maximum possible optical confinement of the VCSEL mode ("λ/2 design"), increases its oscillator strength and reduces dramatically the optical power accumulated in the VCSEL mesa regions outside the aperture. VCSEL designs are suggested that favor single transverse mode operation. Modeling including current-induced and absorption-induced overheating shows that the preference for the transverse fundamental mode persists up to 10 mA current at 5 µm aperture diameter. Error-free data transmission is realized up to 160 Gb/s in digital-multitone (DMT) format using single-mode anti-waveguiding VCSELs. The approach to single-mode anti-waveguiding VCSELs is extended over a broad spectral range realizing error-free high-speed data transmission at both 850 nm and 910 nm.

Anti-waveguiding vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser at 850 nm: From concept to advances in high-speed data transmission.

In this paper, spatial light modulation is proposed to increase the transmission capacity of graded-index multimode fibers. In the method, selected linearly polarized eigenmodes of the fiber are excited using simple binary-phase spatial filters. Numerical results indicate that the selectivity of the method is very high, also for fibers with perturbed profiles. The excess attenuation of the method is very low. In the experiment, a threefold increase of fiber bandwidth for several filters is obtained.

Grzegorz Stepniak

Papers

Compensation of a VLC Phosphorescent White LED Nonlinearity by Means of Volterra DFE

54 Gbit/s OOK transmission using single-mode VCSEL up to 2.2 km MMF

Advanced Modulation Formats in Phosphorous LED VLC Links and the Impact of Blue Filtering

Anti-waveguiding vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser at 850 nm: From concept to advances in high-speed data transmission.

Binary-Phase Spatial Light Filters for Mode-Selective Excitation of Multimode Fibers