Electrooptic modulation of multilongitudinal mode laser diodes: Demonstration at 850 nm with simultaneous data transmission by coherence multiplexing

An electrooptic modulation method based on signal coding through optical delays larger than the source coherence length is described. The method is illustrated with the simultaneous transmission of several signals by path-difference multiplexing. In this method, the signals are coded as a sequence of optical delays introduced by a series of electrooptic modulators working as delay lines. Decoding is carried out by temporal correlation performed by another sequence of optical delays introduced by birefringent plates, and matched to those used at the emission process. The permissible delays are shown to be ruled by the source coherence length and by the number of laser modes.