Developing an Ultra-Dense Optical Frequency Comb Using an Integrated MZM and SPM Schemes in HNLF

Optical frequency comb (OFC) is a broad spec-trum comprised of closely spaced equidistant narrow lines. The generation of OFC is based on several nonlinear effects in highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF), which is employed to produce the repetitive frequencies. This work investigates the usage of cascaded Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZM) and self-phase modulation (SPM) in HNLF as effective spectrum broadening and comb generation techniques. Several parameters have been investigated in order to improve the output spectrum of the comb generation system. The parameters being investigated in this research include the number of comb lines, central wavelength tunability, spectral flatness, and optical tone-to-noise ratio. The simulation results show that the proposed integrated OFC can reach up to 1120 lines and spectral flatness at a level of 20dBm using only two laser sources with a frequency spacing of 43. 38nm. © 2022 IEEE.