Optical Frequency Comb Generator Employing Two Cascaded Frequency Modulators and Mach–Zehnder Modulator

Abstract

Optical frequency combs (OFCs) are extensively used in spectroscopy, range finding, metrology, and optical communications. In this paper, we propose a novel technique to achieve a flat OFC by serially cascading two frequency modulators (FMs) followed by a single-drive Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM). The modulators are driven by a sinusoidal RF signal of frequencies fm, fm2, and 2 fm GHz, respectively. With our proposed approach (fm), an optical spectrum of 71 subcarriers spaced at 4 GHz is realized within a power fluctuation of ∼2 dB. The proposed method is also tested for fm = 16 GHz, showing that this approach can work in all scenarios with lower power fluctuations. In addition, we also studied the impact of the phase of the RF signal on the power variation of the OFC spectrum. A theoretical investigation of the ultra-flat spectrum generated by cascaded FMs and MZM is conducted, and the results of simulations support the findings. The simulation results demonstrate good performance, allowing for the application of our proposed approach in next-generation optical networks.