Stealth transmission of temporal phase en/decoded polarization-modulated-code-shift-keying optical-code-division multiple-access signal over synchronous digital hierarchy network with asynchronous detection

Abstract. An innovative approach for security-enhanced optical stealth transmission in a synchronous digital hierarchy network is proposed and experimentally investigated. The security enhancement is achieved through a signal modulation format, so-called polarization-modulated-code-shift-keying, which is implemented with two superstructured fiber Bragg gratings-based optical-code-division multiple-access encoders and a polarization modulator. The proposed modulation format can provide a constant energy level for both bits 0’s and 1’s, which avoids secure vulnerability of single-stealth-user with on-off-keying modulation before coupling into the host channel and after the cascade of filters. Moreover, a self-made cost-effective gain-switched distributed feedback laser with relatively narrow spectrum is first employed as a stealth optical source, which greatly reduces the system cost and complexity. The stealth signal is recovered and detected asynchronously. The experimental results show high secure performance and robustness against eavesdropping, while keeping a bit error rate below forward error correction limit.