Compact and portable 100-GHz microresonator-based optical frequency comb generation system for dense wavelength division multiplexing fiber optic communication

Abstract

A compact and portable microresonator-based optical frequency comb generation system was developed to provide an array of multiwavelength laser sources for dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) fiber optic communication. The reported comb generation system was capable of producing comb lines after 7 km of travel without environmental control, indicating the effectiveness of the packaging. The comb spacing is about 98.3 GHz (i.e., ∼0.79 nm around 1553 nm), thus the comb line frequencies coincide nicely with 100-GHz DWDM channel frequencies, assuming the suggested channel bandwidth is 0.3 nm. The quality of selected comb lines was evaluated individually based on error vector magnitude (EVM) measurements along with RF spectrum measurements. An average EVM value observed is as low as 3.8%, close to typical EVM values of less than 3% used for fiber optic communication.