Abstract

Nowadays, it is important to consider not only the possibility of information multiplexing, but also the security aspect of its transmission.¹ In this conference, we present a novel telecommunication system based on relative phase coding (see Fig. 1). A highly coherent source is used to transmit data, which consists of a sequence of time intervals of duration t, each exhibiting a different phase. At the receiver, this sequence propagates through an imbalanced Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) exhibiting a differential time-delay matching the time-interval duration τ. At the MZI output, two consecutive intervals overlap, and interferences occur. If the phases of two consecutive intervals are identical, constructive interferences produce a binary "1" at the decoder output. Conversely, if the phases of these intervals differ by π, destructive interferences produce a binary “0”.

© 1996 Optical Society of America