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, singlemode 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.INDEX TERMS Optical frequency comb (OFC), silica microsphere, wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM), passive optical network (PON).

Optical frequency comb (OFC) generators based on whispering gallery mode (WGM) microresonators have a massive potential to ensure spectral and energy efficiency in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) telecommunication systems. The use of silica microspheres for telecommunication applications has hardly been studied but could be promising. We propose, investigate, and optimize numerically a simple design of a silica microsphere-based OFC generator in the C-band with a free spectral range of 200 GHz and simulate its implementation to provide 4-channel 200 GHz spaced WDM data transmission system. We calculate microsphere characteristics such as WGM eigenfrequencies, dispersion, nonlinear Kerr coefficient with allowance for thermo-optical effects, and simulate OFC generation in the regime of a stable dissipative Kerr soliton. We show that by employing generated OFC lines as optical carriers for WDM data transmission, it is possible to ensure error-free data transmission with a bit error rate (BER) of 4.5 × 10−30, providing a total of 40 Gbit/s of transmission speed on four channels.

Current paper characterizes the performance of the three-radio-frequency-channels, orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexed (OFDM) radio-over-fiber (RoF) transmission system in terms of error-vector-magnitude and received optical signal power for a typical 10 GHz receiver obtained by the comprehensive simulations. The impact of the transmitted OFDM channels' signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is also considered. We demonstrate that the SNR decrease from 40 dB to 25 dB results in an error vector magnitude (EVM) increase of up to 4 %. Furthermore, we propose the approach for allowing adjusting these results to other receiver sensitivity and responsivity values by introducing a delta in received optical signal power eliminating additional simulation or complicated calculations. The feasibility of the adjustments with a precision of up to 0.001% of the EVM is proved.

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Optical frequency combs (OFCs) generated in microresonators can substitute for widely employed power-hungry laser arrays, ensuring spectral and energy efficiency in wavelength-division multiplexed passive optical networks (WDM-PONs). Here, we propose a realistic design of a WDM-PON based on a silica microresonator generating an OFC in the dissipative Kerr soliton regime and present a corresponding theoretical study, paying particular attention to the impact of the comb linewidth on the characteristics of the communication system. Using intensive numerical simulation, data transmission performance in an eight-channel 100 GHz spaced WDM-PON is investigated for OFC carrier linewidths of 100 kHz, 1 MHz, 10 MHz, and 100 MHz. We show that microresonator-based OFCs with linewidths of up to 100 MHz can be used for a non-return-to-zero on-off keying modulated data transmission system and give an acceptable bit error rate (BER). Results show that the narrower the linewidth, the lower the BER is. The data transmission results show that error-free data transmission is possible with a BER of 4.4 × 10 −12 for 100 kHz OFC carrier linewidth, providing 80 Gbps of total data rate on eight OFC generated carriers.