Optical CDMA enhanced by nonlinear optics

Intended for the next generation of optical access networks, OCDMA is of great interest to meet the demand of increasing the number of users per access fiber, especially as spectral phase coding increases its performance in the optical domain. This, however, requires handling broad spectra and short pulses, which are best dealt with using opto-electronic or all-optical devices instead of slower electronics. Among others, we demonstrate spectral-phase-coded OCDMA using a fiber-based saturable absorber as thresholding in the receiver.