Single-Source AlGaAs Frequency Comb Transmitter for 661 Tbit/s Data Transmission in a 30-core Fiber. Hu, H., Da Ros, F., Ye, F., Pu, M., Ingerslev, K., Porto da Silva, E., Nooruzzaman, M., Amma, Y., Sasaki, Y., Mizuno, T., Miyamoto, Y., Ottaviano, L., Semenova, E., Guan, P., Zibar, D., Galili, M., Yvind, K., Oxenløwe, L., K., & Morioka, T.
Single-Source AlGaAs Frequency Comb Transmitter for 661 Tbit/s Data Transmission in a 30-core Fiber [pdf]Paper  abstract   bibtex   
We demonstrate an AlGaAs-on-insulator nano-waveguide-based frequency comb with high OSNR enabling a single-source to fully load a 9.6-km heterogeneous 30-core fibre with 661Tbit/s data achieved by 30xcores, 80xWDM, 40 Gbaud, and PDM-16QAM. OCIS codes: (060.2330) Fiber optics communications; (060.4230) Multiplexing. 1. Introduction With the introduction of space-division multiplexing (SDM), the world has seen an explosion in reported records of data transmission throughput, such as the accomplishment of crossing the 1 Pbit/s border in 2012 [1-2]. As cost and energy consumption are becoming limiting factors in high-capacity systems, using fewer lasers with less energy consumption grows desirable and frequency comb based single source transmission has attracted great research interest [3-6]. In this paper, we present the first photonic-chip based frequency comb, relying on spectral broadening of a mode-locked laser comb in an AlGaAs-on-insulator (AlGaAsOI) nano-waveguide, with a sufficient comb output power to support several hundred Tbit/s of optical data. The high comb OSNR allows us to send the 80 WDM PDM channels over 30 spatial channels, and we demonstrate successful 9.6 km transmission in a heterogeneous 30-core fiber reaching a total capacity of 661 Tbit/s. 2. SPM based frequency comb generation in an AlGaAsOI nano-waveguide The AlGaAsOI nano-waveguide (Fig. 1(a)) has recently emerged as an ultra-efficient nonlinear medium, since it combines high intrinsic material nonlinearity (on the order of 10 -17 W/m 2), a high-index contrast as silicon-on-insulator, and low linear loss [7]. In addition, the bandgap of AlGaAs can be engineered by changing the Al concentration to avoid two-photon absorption (TPA) at telecom wavelengths. All of this renders AlGaAsOI nano-waveguide a good source candidate for self-phase modulation (SPM) based optical frequency comb generation. 3. Experimental setup and results The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1 (c). The single source laser in the transmitter is an Erbium glass oscillating modelocked laser, which produces 10-GHz pulses (1542 nm, 1.5-ps FWHM), with a spectrum as shown in Fig. 1 (d). The pulses are amplified and used to generate an optical frequency comb based on SPM in the AlGaAsOI photonic chip (Fig. 1 (b)), with an average launched power of 19.3 dBm (peak power of ~5.6 W). Fig. 1(e) shows the broadened spectrum at the output of the AlGaAsOI nano-waveguide, which has a 20-dB bandwidth of ~44 nm.

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