Research and Experimental Demonstration of UDWDM Transmission and Wavelength Conversion for Optical Satellite Communication Based on OFC

Abstract

An ultra-dense wavelength division multiplexing (UDWDM) transmission and wavelength conversion scheme for optical satellite networks based on optical frequency comb (OFC) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. A proof-of-concept experimental system is established and the test results indicate that the proposed scheme can realize all-optical wavelength conversion and flexible bandwidth allocation through the combination of OFC and wavelength selective switch (WSS). The bit-error rate (BER) of the baseband data is less than 10−9, and the BER of the generated orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) data after transmission is less than the threshold of forward error correction (FEC) coding. The scheme offers a solution for wavelength conversion onboard and increases the spectrum efficiency, which is significantly promising for the flexible-bandwidth optical satellite networks in the future.