Optical carrier supply module using flattened optical multicarrier generation based on sinusoidal amplitude and phase hybrid modulation

This paper presents an optical carrier supply module (OCSM) that functions as a common multicarrier light source, a wavelength bank, for superdense wavelength-division multiplexing (SD-WDM) networks that utilize a large number of wavelengths with narrow channel spacing. A novel sideband generator based on a sinusoidal amplitude-phase hybrid modulation scheme is the key technique. The sideband generator generates nine flattened optical sidebands within 3 dB from one seed light source, and the input from wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) seed carriers expands the number of generated sidebands. Scalability against the number of wavelengths is achieved by increasing the number of seed carriers used. The SD-WDM system employing OCSM reduces the number of laser diodes (LDs) and attendant wavelength monitoring/stabilization circuits. Multiple distributions to SD-WDM networks by splitting the OCSM output can promote this effect. We designed OCSM and experimentally investigated its performance pertaining to the electrical signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the OCSM output. The experimental results show the wavelength scalability to 1000 channels. We also developed an OCSM prototype that generated 12.5-GHz-spaced 256-channel WDM carriers. All the generated carriers exhibit the electrical SNR of more than 31.5 dB at 2.5 Gb/s and the power flatness of within 3 dB. The distribution over 100 SD-WDM networks is experimentally confirmed.