Simultaneous generation of laser sources in S, C and L bands through four-wave mixing of electro-optic frequency combs

Abstract

Increasing bandwidth demands necessitate the use of several carriers in wavelength division multiplexing. Conventionally, carrier wavelengths were generated by individual lasers which suffer from large area and power requirements with scaling of number of carriers. We demonstrate simultaneous generation of over 316 wavelengths in S, C and L bands from two lasers spaced 4 nm apart in the C-band. Electro-optic modulators initially scale each laser to 9 lines (in 20 dB bandwidth). The electro-optic frequency combs are power scaled to $\sim 800$ mW and undergo cascaded four-wave mixing in highly nonlinear fiber to generate wavelengths in the three bands. The number of lines in 20 dB bandwidth in S, C and L bands are 88, 160 and 68 respectively. This system can also be used for RF arbitrary waveform generation.