Nonlocal Nonlinear Electro-Optic Phase Dynamics Demonstrating 10 Gb/s Chaos Communications

Abstract

We report on successful 10 Gb/s transmission of a message hidden in a chaotic optical phase over more than 100 km of an installed fiber optic network. This represents the best performance to date for so-called optical chaos communication, a physical layer oriented optical data encryption technique. Such performances was achieved through the use of a recently developed electro-optic nonlinear delay phase dynamics, inspired from differential phase modulation techniques. The setup appears as a superior alternative to the most popular architectures, i.e., the ones involving laser rate equations subjected to delayed feedback. It is compatible with standard dispersion compensation techniques and optical amplification, as shown by two field experiments over installed fiber optic networks.