A Hybrid OTDM Scheme With Enhanced Demultiplexing Performance

We propose a novel hybrid optical time-division multiplexing (OTDM) approach, which contains hybrid modulation formats of return-to-zero on-off keying and return-to-zero differential-phase-shift keying, and investigate its demultiplexing performance. Compared with conventional OTDM with homogenous modulation format, the target demultiplexed channel in a hybrid OTDM signal suffers from much less degradation due to the possible crosstalk from the adjacent channels. We experimentally demonstrate 84.88- to 10.61-Gb/s hybrid OTDM demultiplexing and achieve a relatively wide switching window, which cannot be realized by using the conventional OTDM. Moreover, experimental results at 42.44 Gb/s show a much larger tolerance against timing misalignment in demultiplexing, which further validates the improved demultiplexing performance by using the hybrid OTDM scheme.