VPIphotonics released the VPIphotonics Design Suite Version 9.7, which includes the following simulation and analysis tools: VPItransmissionMaker Optical Systems, VPIlabExpert, VPIcomponentMaker Fibre Optics, VPIcomponentMaker Photonic Circuits and VPIplayer.
Especially noteworthy are modelling and usability enhancements for the design of modern transmission systems. Applications ranging from low-cost and high-speed direct-detection to high-capacity and flexible digital coherent are supported.
Important new capabilities include:
- Generation and detection of arbitrary N-dimensional modulation formats, spanning over IQ, XY, time, frequency, fibre modes and cores, and others
- Analysis of N-dimensional modulated signals including bit and symbol error rate (BER, SER) estimation, log-likelihood ratio (LLR) computation, symbol-to-bits decoding, automatic constellation alignment
- New adaptive equaliser model combining functionality of feed-forward and decision feedback equaliser (FFE/DFE) and nonlinear Volterra equaliser, which simplifies comparative studies of different equaliser types and settings
- Extended multimode signal model to support heterogeneous multicore fibres with cores that can have different parameters and support different number of modes
- Extended modules for multimode fibre, amplifier, couplers to support signals of multicore fibres as well
- Improved visualisation and analysis of multimode signals by VPIphotonicsAnalyser, including signals in multicore fibres; signal selection by core number, radial and azimuthal index
- Improved analysis (Q-factor, eye opening) of multi-level pulse amplitude modulation (mPAM) signals
- New and enhanced digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms, such as blind phase search (BPS) for carrier-phase recovery, multi-modulus algorithm (MMA) for optimal equalization of signals with higher-order modulation, and others