IM/DD WDM-PON Communication System Based on Optical Frequency Comb Generated in Silica Whispering Gallery Mode Resonator

• Main Authors: Sandis Spolitis, Rihards Murnieks, Laura Skladova, Toms Salgals, Alexey V. Andrianov, Maria P. Marisova, Gerd Leuchs, Elena A. Anashkina, Vjaceslavs Bobrovs
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2021-01-01
• Series: IEEE Access
• Subjects: Optical frequency comb (OFC); silica microsphere; wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM); passive optical network (PON)
• Online Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9417208/

This article reports an implementation of a microsphere-based optical frequency comb (OFC) generator for substitution of individual laser arrays and simulates wavelength division multiplexed passive optical network (WDM-PON) based on this OFC generator. Our proposed generator is built based on silica microsphere, barely studied for fiber optical communication systems, and is a promising solution with photonic integration capability. Kerr OFC as a multiple light source containing more than 20 spectral carriers in the fundamental mode family in the C-band and beyond is demonstrated experimentally. Four of these OFC generator carriers with the highest peak power are studied in simulated 4-channel 393 GHz spaced WDM-PON. Additionally, we show this OFC as a source of optical carriers capable of providing data transmission over most utilized fiber types in modern optical communication systems, namely, single-mode fiber (SMF), non-zero dispersion-shifted fiber (NZ-DSF), and cut-off shifted fiber (CSF). We show through the simulations that error-free data transmission is possible, providing a total transmission capacity of 40 Gbit/s by using four OFC generated carriers.