A novel DWDM-based comb source for future optical network

Abstract

In recent times, there has been enormous growth in internet-based applications such as online entertainment platforms, video conferencing and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) applications which might be the trend in future. In order to support such bandwidth-hungry applications, the speed of the network should be enhanced. Increasing the infrastructure of the network requires heavy investment. Another alternative to increase the capacity of the network is to use dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) which also results in increased costs as the lasers and other equipment needed for generation of wavelengths are required. In this work, an alternative cost effective technique is used to create a DWDM scenario using optical flat comb source (OFCS) by combining amplitude modulator (AM) and single drive mach zehnder modulator (SD-MZM). The spectral lines generated using this procedure can be used in Passive Optical Network (PON) as input sources. In this paper, 51 flat spectral lines are generated and transported over a distance of 100 km which are also capable of supporting a data rate of greater than 10 Gbps in a single spectral line.