Wavelength-Swept Super-Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (SD-WDM) Transmitter: Theoretical and Experimental Study of Performance Degradation Caused by Interchannel Crosstalk

This paper presents a theoretical and experimental study of performance degradation caused by the interchannel crosstalk of a previously proposed scheme for a super-dense wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transmitter based on wavelength-swept light. In the theoretical study, we calculate the relationship between the optical filter bandwidth, the wavelength sweep range, and the power penalty based on an approximate modeling process. And we employ the results to clarify the number of channels that can be achieved without a serious power penalty for use as a practical criterion when the wavelength sweep range is given. Furthermore, we describe experiments on multichannel 100 Mb/s and 1.0 Gb/s WDM signal generation and selective detection using a fiber Bragg grating filter with a 3-dB bandwidth of 10.5 GHz. The results confirm that the theoretical and the experimental results agree well when the spectral broadening induced by data modulation is not very large.