Multi-wavelength 128 Gbit/s/λ PAM4 optical transmission enabled by a 100 GHz quantum dot mode-locked optical frequency comb

Abstract Semiconductor mode-locked lasers (MLLs) with extremely high repetition rates are promising optical frequency comb (OFC) sources for their usage as compact, high-efficiency, and low-cost light sources in high-speed dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) transmissions. The fully exploited conventional C- and L- bands require the research on O-band to fulfil the transmission capacity of the current photonic networks. In this work, we present a passive two-section InAs/InGaAs quantum-dot (QD) MLL-based OFC with a fundamental repetition rate of ~100 GHz operating at O-band wavelength range. The specially designed device favours the generation of nearly Fourier-transform-limited pulses in the entire test range by only pumping the gain section while with the absorber unbiased. The typical integrated relative intensity noise (RIN) of the whole spectrum and a single tone are -152 dB/Hz and -137 dB/Hz in the range of 100 MHz to 10 GHz, respectively. Back-to-back (B2B) data transmissions for 7 selected tones have been realised by employing a 64 Gbaud four-level pulse amplitude modulation format (PAM-4). The demonstrated performance shows the feasibility of the InAs QD MLLs as a simple structure, easy operation, and low power consumption OFC sources for high-speed fibre-optic communications.