Geng Yong, Zhou Heng, Han Xinjie, Cui Wenwen, Zhang Qiang, Liu Boyuan, Deng Guangwei, Zhou Qiang, Qiu Kun
Key Lab of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communication Networks, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 611731, China.
Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 611731, China.
Nat Commun. 2022 Feb 28;13(1):1070. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28712-y.
Dissipative Kerr soliton microcombs have been recognized as a promising multi-wavelength laser source for fiber optical communications, as their comb lines possess frequency and phase stability far beyond the independent lasers. Especially, for coherent optical communications, a highly beneficial but rarely explored target is to re-generate a Kerr soliton microcomb as the receiver local oscillators that conserve the frequency and phase property of the incoming data carriers, so that to enable coherent detection with minimized optical and electrical compensations. Here, via pump laser conveying and two-point locking, we implement re-generation of a Kerr soliton microcomb that faithfully clones the frequency and phase of another microcomb sent from 50 km away. Moreover, by using the coherence-cloned soliton microcombs as carriers and local oscillators, we demonstrate terabit coherent data interconnect, wherein traditional digital processes for frequency offset estimation are totally dispensed with, and carrier phase estimation is substantially simplified via slowed-down estimation rate per channel and joint estimation among multiple channels. Our work reveals that, in addition to providing a multitude of laser tones, regulating the frequency and phase of Kerr soliton microcombs among transmitters and receivers can significantly improve optical coherent communication in terms of performance, power consumption, and simplicity.
耗散克尔孤子微梳已被公认为是光纤通信中一种很有前途的多波长激光源，因为它们的梳状谱线具有远超独立激光器的频率和相位稳定性。特别是对于相干光通信，一个非常有益但很少被探索的目标是将克尔孤子微梳再生为接收端本地振荡器，以保留输入数据载波的频率和相位特性，从而实现以最小的光学和电学补偿进行相干检测。在此，通过泵浦激光传输和两点锁定，我们实现了克尔孤子微梳的再生，它能忠实地克隆从50公里外发送来的另一个微梳的频率和相位。此外，通过使用相干克隆的孤子微梳作为载波和本地振荡器，我们展示了太比特相干数据互连，其中完全省去了用于频率偏移估计的传统数字处理过程，并且通过降低每个通道的估计速率以及在多个通道之间进行联合估计，大大简化了载波相位估计。我们的工作表明，除了提供多种激光频率外，在发射机和接收机之间调节克尔孤子微梳的频率和相位可以在性能、功耗和简易性方面显著改善光相干通信。
