Performance analysis on quality of optical frequency comb generated by the recirculating frequency shifter based on linear IQ modulator

Abstract

An optical frequency comb generator using a modified single-sideband recirculating frequency shifter scheme adopting a linear IQ modulator as the kernel device (SSB-RFS-LIQM) is proposed. The optical comb lines generated by the proposed scheme possess good features such as extreme flatness and high optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR), compared to the quality we can obtain when we use a conventional IQ modulator in the SSB-RFS structure (called SSB-RFS-CIQM scheme). The mechanism of how the SSB-RFS-LIQM works is carefully analyzed with analytical and numerical methods. With the capability of strong suppression of high- order crosstalk and less demand of the gain of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (and hence less amplified sponta- neous noise induced) in the loop, 5.5 dB OSNR improvement can be achieved when 100 extreme flat comb lines are generated using the SSB-RFS-LIQM scheme compared to using the SSB-RFS-CIQM scheme.©2015 Societyof