Dissipative Kerr soliton microcombs for FEC-free optical communications over 100 channels

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the use of dissipative Kerr soliton microcombs as a cost-effective, high-capacity light source for FEC-free optical communication over 100 channels, suitable for data center applications.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental demonstration of FEC-free high-capacity optical transmission using soliton microcombs in a practical IM-DD scheme.

Findings

Achieved BER <10^(-9) at 1.45 Tbps over 145 channels

Demonstrated ultra-dense WDM with microcombs in the C-band

Showed potential for microcomb-based data center communications

Abstract

The demand for high-speed and highly efficient optical communication techniques has been rapidly growing due to the ever-increasing volume of data traffic. As well as the digital coherent communication used for core and metro networks, intensity modulation and direct detection (IM-DD) are still promising schemes in intra/inter data centers thanks to their low latency, high reliability, and good cost performance. In this work, we study a microresonator-based frequency comb as a potential light source for future IM-DD optical systems where applications may include replacing individual stabilized lasers with a continuous laser driven microresonator. Regarding comb line powers and spectral intervals, we compare a modulation instability comb and a soliton microcomb and provide a quantitative analysis with regard to telecom applications. Our experimental demonstration achieved a forward error correction (FEC) free operation of bit-error rate (BER) <10^(-9) with a 1.45 Tbps capacity using a total of 145 lines over the entire C-band and revealed the possibility of soliton microcomb-based ultra-dense wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) with a simple, cost-effective IM-DD scheme, with a view to future practical use in data centers.