Injection-locking for coherent detection of multi-wavelength systems

Multi-wavelength transmission has become the accepted solution to enhancing the capacity of optical communications systems. The use of coherent detection in multi-wavelength systems offers improved receiver sensitivity and wavelength selectivity. In addition to these fundamental advantages, coherent detection also allows the direct application of sophisticated multiple access protocols such as CDMA (code division multiple access) which are common in radio frequency communications. For instance, the capacity of a high-bandwidth local area network can be enhanced by employing a hybrid CDMA/WDMA protocol.