Tunable ultraflat optical frequency comb generator based on optoelectronic oscillator using dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator

The linear frequency swept light source is a critical device for several sensing applications, including FMCW LiDAR, with which the maximum sensing distance is determined by the coherence length of the light source and the spatial resolution is limited by the frequency scan nonlinearity. Here, we report what we believe to be a novel approach to generate highly coherent optical linear frequency sweeps (LFS) with a Fourier domain mode-locked (FDML) opto-electronic oscillator (OEO) deploying carrier suppressed single sideband (CS-SSB) modulation enabled by a dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DP-MZM), with the coherence length determined by the fixed frequency laser used in the OEO, without the need of an expensive high-speed arbitrary waveform generator (AWG). Concurrently, a radio frequency (RF) LFS synchronized with the optical LFS is also generated with the FDML OEO. We obtained a nearly ideal optical LFS around 1550 nm with a side-mode suppression ratio of 27.4 dB, by controlling the bias point and the RF power feeding back to the DP-MZM in the OEO loop. The resulting dual optical and RF LFS' achieved a chirp rate of 27.27 MHz/µs and a frequency tuning range of 0.6 GHz, which can be extended to 142 MHz/µs and 2.0 GHz, respectively by reducing the size of the tunable ring filter circuit inside the OEO loop. By using pre-distortion method, the residual nonlinearity is reduced to 1.9881 × 10-5, and the root mean square (RMS) value of the frequency swept nonlinearity is less than 0.764 MHz. Our dual optical and RF LFS generation with a CS-SSB FDML-OEO has the advantages of long coherence length, high tuning speed, excellent frequency tuning linearity and repeatability, and potentially low cost, which can be used to make a dual optical and RF FMCW ranging system (LiDAR and RADAR) and are attractive for many applications, such as 3D sensing and autonomous driving, as well as optical frequency domain reflectometer (OFDR), and other applications requiring fast and reliable linear frequency sweeps in either optical and RF domains.

A new type of tunable waveguide optical frequency comb generator (FCG) integrated in a LiNbO3 ring resonator cavity is presented. The modeling of the integrated ring FCG, performance simulation and initial experimental results are described.

A new scheme for highly flexible optical Nyquist pulses generation is proposed by using a dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator (DPMZM) and an intensity modulator (IM) without any external optical filter. The optical Nyquist pulses generator includes two stages. At the first stage, 2-, 3-, or 5-carrier light sources with two different frequency spacing are generated by utilizing a DPMZM. At the second stage, the light source used as seed light is then sent to IM, and two forms of optical frequency combs with spectral line flatness of less than 0.7 dB can be finally obtained by simply adjusting the DC bias and amplitude of radio frequency signal applied to IM. Ideal sinc-shaped Nyquist pulses are also generated in the time domain with bandwidth from 75 to 225 GHz and repetition rate from 40 to 80 ps. Simulation results show the high flexibility, effectiveness, and practicability of the proposed scheme, which can be applied to future high-capacity optical transmission systems.

We proposed an optical 4-ary frequency shift keying (FSK) modulation scheme applying dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder (MZ) modulator. The 4-ary FSK based on the single-side-band modulation scheme can greatly lower the transmission speed in each sub-carriers and increase the transmission performance, comparing with the 2-FSK signal. The transmission performance of the 4-ary FSK was demonstrated after a 50 km single mode fiber. The results showed that the 4-ary FSK can realize error-free transmission. Moreover, we analyzed the influence of factors (such as disperse compensation and demodulation bandwidth) on the transmission performance in this paper. The analysis of the influenced factors can provide a theoretical basic for experiment.

We propose and demonstrate a tunable femtosecond electro-optic optical frequency comb by shaping a continuous-wave seed laser in an all-fiber configuration. The seed laser, operating at 1.5 μm, is first cascade-phase-modulated and subsequently de-chirped to generate low-contrast pulses of approximately 8 ps at a repetition rate of 5.95 GHz. These pulses are then refined into clean, high-quality picosecond pulses using a Mamyshev regenerator. The generated source is further amplified using an erbium–ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier operating in a highly nonlinear regime, yielding output pulses compressed to around 470 fs. Tunable continuously across a 5.7~6 GHz range with a 1 MHz resolution, the picosecond pulses undergo nonlinear propagation in the final amplification stage, leading to output pulses that can be further compressed to a few hundred femtoseconds. By using a tunable bandpass filter, the center wavelength and spectral bandwidth can be flexibly tuned. This system eliminates the need for mode-locked cavities, simplifying conventional ultrafast electro-optic combs by relying solely on phase modulation, while delivering femtosecond pulses at multiple-gigahertz repetition rates.

We propose and demonstrate a photonic microwave up-conversion approach based on a self-starting optoelectronic oscillator (OEO). The OEO incorporating a dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DPMZM) simultaneously works as a high-quality local oscillator and a broadband mixer to directly up-convert intermediate-frequency vector signals. The phase noise performance of the oscillation signal is proven to be independent of the vector signals. Through properly setting one dc bias of the DPMZM in the OEO, the dispersion-induced power fading for the up-converted signal in a radio over fiber transmission system can be compensated. In this experiment, 200 Mb/s 64 QAM signal at 2.4 GHz is successfully up-converted to 12.4 GHz by the OEO operating at 10 GHz and transmitted over 30 km single mode fiber without dispersion penalty.

We demonstrate widely wavelength-tunable and ultra-flat optical frequency comb generation from an actively mode-locked short-cavity laser employing a short-length bismuth-oxide-based nonlinear erbium-doped fiber. A 10GHz-spaced frequency comb with a 10dB bandwidth of 250GHz is generated.

Flat optical frequency comb generation by using one DPMZM and superposed harmonics

A tunable high-order single-sideband signal generator with optical carrier suppression (SSB-OCS generator) is proposed, which is based on frequency multiplication operation using dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator (DPMZM) and Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI). By changing all the modulators at maximum or minimum transmission point simultaneously, the amplitude of input radio frequency (RF) signals and the phase difference between input RF signals, two high-order even or odd signals with opposite amplitude of one sideband, are generated by upper DPMZM and lower DPMZM, respectively. Then, two optical signals are coupled to reserve one sideband, and the coupled SSB-OCS signal is injected into an MZI to suppress high-order intermodulation components. The simulated results show that the first-, second-, and third-order SSB-OCS signals can be achieved, and the suppression ratio is over 30 dB, which agrees well with the theoretical prediction. This scheme is featured by the capability to generate tunable high-order SSB-OCS signal with high suppression ratio, and the operation is simple and flexible. Finally, an experiment was carried out to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme, and a first- and second-order SSB-OCS signal were obtained, respectively, and the suppression ratio is over 24 dB.

A microwave frequency divider with switchable division ratios is proposed using an opto-electronic oscillating loop based on a dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator. Different frequency division ratios can be achieved by merely adjusting the loop phase.

We present some optical signal processing methods for optical time-division multiplexing, based on electro-optic modulators. Dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder modulator and time-lens-based signal processing for optical frequency comb generation, optical Nyquist pulse generation and time-domain demultiplexing are realized. Multifunctional optoelectronic oscillators which are capable of performing simultaneous electrical clock recovery, optical clock recovery and demultiplexing are demonstrated with modulators embedded as the key components.

An ultraflat self-oscillating optical frequency comb generator based on an optoelectronic oscillator employing cascaded modulators was proposed and experimentally demonstrated. By incorporating the optoelectronic oscillation loop with cascaded modulators into the optical frequency comb generator, 11 ultraflat comb lines would be generated, and the frequency spacing is equal to the oscillation frequency of the OEO. 10 and 12GHz optical frequency combs are demonstrated with the spectral power variation below 0.82dB and 0.93dB respectively. The corresponding spectral pure microwave source are also generated and evaluated. The corresponding single-sideband phase noise are as low as -122dBc/Hz and -115 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset frequency.

A novel automatic bias control (ABC) is proposed to generate arbitrary signals with a dualparallel Mach-Zehnder modulator. We demonstrated the practical generation of arbitrary modulated signals using the proposed scheme.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a photonic millimeter-wave frequency divider based on a super-harmonic injection-locked optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) and an optical frequency comb. The optical frequency comb generator is incorporated into an OEO loop to create broadband comb lines with low noise. By injecting a millimeter-wave with frequency around N times of the fundamental oscillating frequency f0 of the OEO, the injection signal can be down-converted to an intermediate frequency (IF) signal close to the oscillating frequency of the OEO. The free running OEO is synchronized with the IF signal via an injection locking mechanism. Consequently, it forms an injection-locked frequency divider as the frequency ratio between the injection signal and OEO's output signal is precisely equal to N. We carry out an experiment to divide the 45 GHz signal into 7.5 GHz and the experimental results agree well with the theoretical analysis. By changing the frequency of the injection signal, division ratio from 2 to 5 is also demonstrated on one setup. Due to the broadband spectra of the optical comb and low phase noise characteristics of the OEO, it is potential to realize very large division ratio and low phase noise for multiple input frequencies mf 0 .

We review recent results on nonlinear frequency conversion in passive resonators, focussing in particular on the generation of widely tunable parametric sidebands in Kerr microresonators and optical frequency combs in quadratically nonlinear cavities.