Silica Microsphere WGMR-Based Kerr-OFC Light Source and Its Application for High-Speed IM/DD Short-Reach Optical Interconnects

Abstract

Kerr optical frequency combs (OFCs) based on silica microsphere whispering gallery mode resonator (WGMR) have various applications where they are used as a light source. For telecommunication purposes, WGMR-based Kerr-OFC comb generators can be physically realized using silica microsphere resonators and can be used to replace multiple laser arrays. In such a realization, these novel light sources have the potential to demonstrate an attractive solution for intra-datacenter interconnects (DCI). In this paper, we show an experimental demonstration of a silica microsphere WGMR-based Kerr OFC light source where newly generated 400 GHz spaced carriers together with powerful linear equalization techniques, such as a linear symbol-spaced adaptive decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) with feed-forward (FF) and feedback (FB) taps, provide an alternative to individual lasers ensuring low-cost and low-complexity IM/DD scheme for the transmission of NRZ-OOK modulated signals at data rates up to 50 Gbps/λ over 2 km SMF link. Finally, we demonstrate a record 50 Gbps per λ transmission of NRZ-OOK modulated signals with a novel silica microsphere WGMR-based Kerr-OFC as a light source operating in the optical C-band, surpassing the previously demonstrated data rate record by five times.

Thermo-Optical Sensitivity of Whispering Gallery Modes in As2S3 Chalcogenide Glass Microresonators

“…Microresonators with certain advantages and disadvantages are produced from different materials using special technologies [12]. Among dielectric microresonators, glass microresonators are widely used, and silica ones are the most common since they can be manufactured in a reproducible manner from standard telecommunication fibers [13][14][15][16][17][18]. However, the use of other non-silica glasses with very different properties is also actively attracting the attention of different research groups since this allows expanding the boundaries of the possibilities and applications for microresonators and improving the characteristics of the devices based on them.…”

Fabrication of Whispering Gallery Mode Resonators and Implementation in Fibre Optical Communication Systems

“…2.5 has been used to obtain an OFC in a micro-rod light source. The TP fabricated from a non-zero dispersion shifted fibre (NZ-DSF), similar to previous studies [43], and the silica micro-rod are enclosed in a box to protect them from dust. Inside the box, the humidity is kept below 20 % with the help of a silicon gel desiccant (dryer).…”