Constructing a two bands optical code-division multiple-access network of bipolar optical access codecs using Walsh-coded liquid crystal modulators

We propose and experimentally demonstrated the two bands optical code-division multiple-access (OCDMA) network over bipolar Walsh-coded liquid-crystal modulators (LCMs) and driven by green light and red light lasers. Achieving system performance depends on the construction of a decoder that implements a true bipolar correlation using only unipolar signals and intensity detection for each band. We took advantage of the phase delay characteristics of LCMs to construct a prototype optical coder/decoder (codec). Matched and unmatched Walsh signature codes were evaluated to detect correlations among multiuser data in the access network. By using LCMs, a red and green laser light source was spectrally encoded and the summed light dots were complementary decoded. Favorable contrast on auto-and cross-correlations indicates that binary information symbols can be properly recovered using a balanced photodetector. (C) 2014 The Japan Society of Applied Physics