Cascaded multiplexed optical link on a telecommunication network for frequency dissemination

We demonstrate a cascaded optical link for ultrastable frequency dissemination comprised of two compensated links of 150 km and a repeater station. Each link includes 114 km of Internet fiber simultaneously carrying data traffic through a dense wavelength division multiplexing technology, and passes through two routing centers of the telecommunication network. The optical reference signal is inserted in and extracted from the communication network using bidirectional optical add-drop multiplexers. The repeater station operates autonomously ensuring noise compensation on the two links and the ultra-stable signal optical regeneration. The compensated link shows a fractional frequency instability of 3 x 10(-15) at one second measurement time and 5 x 10(-20) at 20 hours. This work paves the way to a wide dissemination of ultra-stable optical clock signals between distant laboratories via the Internet network. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America