학술논문

Quantifying the Impact of Frequency Comb Distillation on Comb-Based Optical Communications Systems
Document Type
Periodical
Source
Journal of Lightwave Technology J. Lightwave Technol. Lightwave Technology, Journal of. 41(10):3034-3045 May, 2023
Subject
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Photonics and Electrooptics
Optical filters
Optical noise
Bandwidth
Signal to noise ratio
Wavelength division multiplexing
Resonators
Optical fiber communication
Microring resonator
microcombs
comb distillation
optical-carrier-to-noise ratio
superchannel transmission
space-division-multiplexing
Language
ISSN
0733-8724
1558-2213
Abstract
Microring resonators (MRR) can be used as a selective filter for amplified optical frequency combs, to reduce the impact of broadband noise. This approach, called comb distillation, could be useful when amplifying low-power microcombs. Comb distillation can substantially reduce the required comb line optical-carrier-to-noise ratio (OCNR) needed to support optical communications. However, the understanding of noise characteristics after comb distillation in a communications system has not been thoroughly established. In this paper, we find closed form solutions for noise after distillation, and directly link this to achievable system signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), providing a method to assess the expected system performance when the distilling MRR device resonance bandwidth and coupling loss are changed. This can be used to predict the distillation-enabled increase in the number of usable lines of microcombs for superchannel transmission, and/or the number of spatial modes for space-division-multiplexing (SDM) systems based on a distilled microcomb.