Optical phase-locked PSK heterodyne experiment at 4 Gb/s

A 4 Gb/s phase-locked optical PSK (phase shift keying) heterodyne communication system is demonstrated. The receiver was implemented with a single 100-Ω loaded p-i-n photodiode and a 1320-nm diode-pumped miniature Nd:YAG laser as a local oscillator. For a 2⁷-1 PRBS (pseudorandom bit sequence), the receiver sensitivity was -34.2 dBm or 631 photons/bit. The corresponding power on the surface of the detector was -37.3 dBm or 309 photons/bit. With a 2¹⁵-1 PRBS, a 2.6 dB additional sensitivity degradation was observed due to the nonideal frequency response of the phase modulator and the receiver amplifiers