Breakthroughs in photonics 2014: Optical physical-layer network coding, recent developments, and challenges

Abstract

Network coding is a revolutionary technique that can enhance network throughput and protection. This paper introduces optical physical-layer network coding (OPNC) and the recent development of OPNC, with focused discussion on 'common-channel' OPNC that can efficiently utilize network resources. It also describes the challenges ahead of OPNC, including incorporating more than two signals for OPNC; circumventing the higher signal processing complexity when higher order modulations are adopted; and exploiting OPNC in more sophisticated multichannel systems.