Ezra Ip is a Senior Researcher in the Optical Networking and Sensing Department at NEC Laboratories America. Ezra Ip received the B.E. degree (Hons.) in electrical and electronics engineering from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University. His doctoral thesis was on coherent detection and digital signal processing for optical communications.
He has published more than 100 journal articles and conference papers in the areas of high-capacity optical transmission, digital signal processing techniques, space-division multiplexing, and distributed fiber sensing. Dr. Ip has served on the topical program committees of OFC, ECOC, APC, and other conferences. He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Photonics Technology Letters. His research has shaped the development of digital signal processing techniques for optical systems, including modulation formats, phase recovery, and polarization multiplexing.
At NEC, he plays a key role in designing photonic subsystems for elastic optical networks and next-generation transport layers. His work continues to influence both academic and industrial research, particularly in scaling optical capacity and improving signal integrity over long-haul fiber links.
A two-stage neural network model is applied on captured PS-144QAM raw data to estimate channel G-OSNR in a metro network field trial. We obtained 0.27dB RMSE with first-stage CNN classifier and second-stage ANN regressions.
For the first time, we demonstrate detection of vehicle speed, density, and road conditions using deployed fiber carrying high-speed data transmission, and prove carriers’ large-scale fiber infrastructures can also be used as ubiquitous sensing networks.
We propose a novel multi-parameter sensing technique based on a Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry in the elliptical-core few-mode fiber, using higher-order optical and acoustic modes. Multiple Brillouin peaks are observed for the backscattering of both the LP01 mode and LP11 mode. We characterize the temperature and strain coefficients for various opticalacoustic mode pairs. By selecting the proper combination of modes pairs, the performance of multi-parameter sensing can be optimized. Distributed sensing of temperature and strain is demonstrated over a 0.5-km elliptical-core few-mode fiber, with the discriminative uncertainty of 0.28°C and 5.81 ?? for temperature and strain, respectively.
We demonstrate high spectral efficiency transmission over 549 km of field-deployed single-mode fiber using probabilistic-shaped 144QAM. We achieved 41.5 Tb/s over the C-band at a spectral efficiency of 9.02 b/s/Hz using 32-Gbaud channels at a channel spacing of 33.33 GHz, and 38.1 Tb/s at a spectral efficiency of 8.28 b/s/Hz using 48-Gbaud channels at a channel spacing of 50 GHz. To the best of our knowledge, these are the highest total capacities and spectral efficiencies reported in a metro field environment using C-band only. In high spectral efficiency transmission, it is necessary to optimize back-to-back performance in order to maximize the link loss margin. Our results are enabled by the joint optimization of constellation shaping and coding overhead to minimize the gap to Shannon’s capacity, transmitter- and receiver-side digital backpropagation, signal clipping optimization, and I/Q imbalance compensation.
We propose a single-ended Brillouin-based sensor in elliptical-core few-mode optical fiber for multi-parameter measurement using spontaneous Brillouin scattering. Distributed sensing of temperature and strain is demonstrated over 0.5 km elliptical-core few-mode fiber.
We study digital signal processing techniques to optimize the back-to-back performance of large probabilistic shaped constellations. We cover joint optimization of LDPC and constellation shaping, CD pre-compensation, clipping and I/Q imbalance compensation.
41.5-Tb/s over 549 km of deployed SSMF in Verizon’s network is achieved using probabilistic-shaped 144QAM to optimize throughput at ultra-fine granularity. This is the highest C-band only capacity and spectral efficiency in metro field environment.
Quality of transmission prediction for real-time mixed line-rate systems is realized using artificial neural network based transfer learning with SDN orchestrating. 0.42 dB accuracy is achieved with a 1000 to 20 reduction in training samples.
