1186
21, 1 NOVEMBER 2023
Dual Electro-Optic Comb Generator by
Heterodyning Two Combs for Extending
the Optical Bandwidth
Rahat Ullah , Ubaid Ullah , Sibghat Ullah, Abdullah A. Al-Atawi , Hathal Salamah Alwageed ,
Ahmad Almadhor , Member, IEEE, Shuaidong Chen, and Jianxin Ren
Abstract— A novel dual-electro-optic (DEO) comb generator is
proposed by heterodyning the optical frequency combs (OFCs)
to achieve a high bandwidth of ∼2.74 THz with an efficient and
cost-effective structure. This can attract the research commu-
nity’s interest, particularly for the inherent support in optical
communications due to its simplicity and high throughput. The
OFC is generated by cascading a continuous wave (CW) laser
and Mach Zehnder modulator (MZM) coupled to a second laser
source that produces a broad spectrum of frequencies by the
frequency heterodyning after passing it through a second MZM.
This is the highest number of comb lines produced so far in
cascaded configurations of the electro-optic modulators. The
frequency difference between the two lasers is carefully selected,
equal to 1.38 THz, which combinedly produces around 137 well-
flattened OFC lines with 20 GHz frequency spacing and more
than 40 dBm tone to noise ratio and an amplitude difference of
0 to 6 dB. The bandwidth of the generated flattened comb source
is approximately 2.74 THz, which covers over half of the optical
C-band.
Index Terms— Optical frequency comb (OFC), cascaded mod-
ulators, dual electro-optic OFC, frequency heterodyning-based
OFC.
Manuscript received 16 May 2023; accepted 6 June 2023. Date of publi-
cation 9 June 2023; date of current version 6 September 2023. This work
was supported in part by the National Key Research and Development
Program of China under Grant 2018YFB1801302; in part by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61835005, Grant 61822507,
Grant 61522501, Grant 61475024, Grant 61675004, Grant 61705107, Grant
61727817, Grant 61775098, Grant 61720106015, and Grant 61875248.
(Corresponding authors: Rahat Ullah; Sibghat Ullah.)
Rahat Ullah, Shuaidong Chen, and Jianxin Ren are with the School
of Physics and Optoelectronics, Nanjing University of Information Sci-
ence and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China (e-mail: rahat@nuist.edu.cn;
20211151001@nuist.edu.cn; 003458@nuist.edu.cn).
Ubaid Ullah is with the Networks and Communication Engineering
Department, Al Ain University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (e-mail:
Ubaid.ullah@aau.ac.ae).
Sibghat Ullah is with the National Research Center for Optical
Sensors/Communications Integrated Networks, School of Electronic Science
and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China (e-mail:
sibghat@bupt.edu.cn).
Abdullah A. Al-Atawi is with the Department of Computer Science,
Applied College, University of Tabuk, Tabuk 47512, Saudi Arabia (e-mail:
a.alatawi@ut.edu.sa).
Hathal Salamah Alwageed is with the College of Computer and Infor-
mation Sciences, Jouf University, Sakaka 72388, Saudi Arabia (e-mail:
hswageed@ju.edu.sa).
Ahmad Almadhor is with the Department of Computer Engineering and
Networks, College of Computer and Information Sciences, Jouf University,
Sakaka 72388, Saudi Arabia (e-mail: aaalmadhor@ju.edu.sa).
Color versions of one or more figures in this letter are available at
https://doi.org/10.1109/LPT.2023.3285155.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2023.3285155
1041-1135 © 2023 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 35, NO.
O PTICAL frequency combs (OFCs) with flat spectral
envelopes and high and equal frequency spacings are
highly desirable because they play a significant role in
optical frequency metrology, spectroscopy, astronomy, and
optical communications. Many techniques and mechanisms
are offered by deploying various laser sources to generate
the OFCs. Each type of OFC has different applications
discussed in detail in [1] and [2]. The electro-optic (EO)
modulators-based OFCs have improved the system perfor-
mance in optical [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] and long haul
optical transmissions supporting high data rates [9], [10],
[11]; OFCs can be generated by cascaded configuration of
EO modulators or by using a re-circulating frequency shifting
loop with EO modulators [12]. Similarly, self-oscillating-based
OFC can also be generated using different numbers of EO
modulators [3], [13], [14]. All these OFCs are generated
by the cascaded configuration of the EO modulators driven
by a dedicated RF source or self-oscillating optoelectronic
oscillator, which specifies the frequency spacing among the
comb lines.
The dual electro-optic (DEO) comb generators have gained
the interest of the research community due to the combi-
nation of simplicity and high performance unmatched by
other OFC generators [16], [17]. DEO comb generator using
silicon MZM is reported in [18] by taking advantage of
the EO modulators-based OFCs proposed for fine-resolution
absorption spectroscopy. The OFC is assessed w.r.t coherence,
number of lines, and tunability, which pools the tunability in
frequency spacing and dual-comb spectroscopy to measure
the exact detectable optical spectra at a unique microwave
signal (frequency spacings). In [19], Martín-Mateos et al. pro-
posed dual-comb signals deploying a pair of EO modulators,
which allowed a fully adaptable comb spacing and spectral
coverage and was deployed for spectroscopic measurements.
Unlike traditional OFCs, a spectrally broadened EO comb is
proposed by seeding a directly generated Gaussian pulse train
followed by a highly nonlinear fiber in the normal dispersion
regime [20]. These DEO combs [16], [17], [18], [19], [20]
are deployed for spectroscopic-related problems but cannot
be deployed for Optical communications because of different
frequency spacings, linewidths, etc. On the other hand, the
proposed DEO comb generator would be easily deployable in
optical access networks.
Hence by taking advantage of EOMs, two OFCs are linked
coherently in a novel way using two lasers to produce a
bandwidth of around 2.74 THz, which covers over half of
ULLAH et al.: DEO COMB GENERATOR BY HETERODYNING TWO COMBS 1187

the optical C-band. The proposed DEO comb can offer up to

3.2 THz bandwidth and a whopping 160 optical carriers. How-
ever, we have considered the bandwidth of well-flattened opti-
cal comb lines, which is approximately 2.74 THz. The OFCs
are vital in advancing the research domain of the long-haul
optical communication networks supporting terabytes of data.
Therefore, increasing frequency tones and covering a high
bandwidth in the optical C-band is indispensable for expanding
the boundary of applications in optical communications and
networks.
In this letter, the large frequency difference between the
two laser sources is coherently bridged using the optical
coupler and MZMs with careful configuration management,
which utilizes the frequency difference constructively and
interferes with the comb lines of generated OFCs by the
EO modulators. The sidebands are important in finding the
highest measurable frequency difference using the OFC gen-
erator in the frequency-difference measurements. It is worth
mentioning that material dispersion limits the span of side-
bands. Therefore, this chain of comb lines is linked with
careful measurements of the sidebands, where the weak side-
bands are constructively linked to produce more promising
results.
The proposed DEO comb generator links two optical
sources having a frequency difference of 1.38 THz between
the driving laser sources. A broad spectrum of OFC lines is
generated by heterodyning the two OFCs. An MZM is an EO
modulator that can convert one single frequency into multiple
frequencies by heterodyning the light source with a local RF Fig. 1. (A): Schematic diagram of the proposed setup for DEO comb. [RF:
signal. Figure 1(A) shows the block diagram of the proposed radio frequency; F1 and F2 are the laser frequencies; MZ: Mach Zehnder
modulators; NOCL: number of comb lines; AD: amplitude difference; OFCG:
DEO comb generator, and Figure 1(B) depicts the diagram- optical frequency comb generator]; (B): Diagrametical representation of the
matical representation of the DEO comb generation process. proposed model (A).
As shown in Figure 1, OFC-1 is generated by feeding the laser
light and RF signal to the first MZM. The MZM modulates
the laser light with the RF signal, producing OFC lines that
contain the sum and difference of the two signals, which means Furthermore, it can be noticed that the comb lines produced
the OFC spreads on both sides of the central frequency of the across the L:2 are almost equal to the OFC1, while the
laser source. It can be mathematically written as number of comb lines across OFC1 is increased on both
sides. This is because the second MZM not only generates the
O FC1 = L : 1 ± f R F (1) second OFC but also enhances the bandwidth of the optical
The L:1 shows the first CW laser’s central frequency, and spectra and further fine-tunes the comb lines and the weak
f R F shows the RF signal. Figure 1(B) shows how the central sidebands of the OFC1. Figure 1(B) shows the diagrammatical
frequency produces many sidebands according to the above explanation of the comb generation and expansion process
equation (1), the ω0 is the main frequency, but it produces at the optical spectrum analyzer stages A, B, and C, shown
the sidebands like ±ω1 , ±ω2 , ±ω3 , . . . , ±ωn . The OFC1 in Figure 1(A).
is then coupled with the second laser source (L:2) with a On the other hand, if a single laser source is deployed
central frequency of 194.46 THz, which is then passed through with two similar or different cascaded modulators, the number
the second MZM. The output of the coupler (Cp) can be of carriers will be much less than in the proposed model.
described as The suggested work is interesting since it adds a second
C p = O FC1 + L : 2 (2) laser source at the coupler point, which not only increases
bandwidth but also results in more comb lines. A wide range
The Cp’s output is injected into the optical input arm of the
second MZM. Both MZ modulators are driven by an ideal RF of applications of OFCs can be studied in [21].
source with a signal frequency and phase of 20 GHz and 900 , The final OFC produced by this process covers approx-
respectively, and is used to outline the frequency spacing of imately 3.2 THz bandwidth, out of which 2.74 THz is
the comb lines. As the MZM produces more frequencies by occupied by the well-flattened comb lines, which lies in
the frequency heterodyning, so when the Cp’s output is passed the optical C-band. Suppose that the optical field of L:1 is
through the second MZM, more sidebands are generated across defined as: E L:1 = E 1 cos(ω0 t), and of the second laser as
the OFC1 and on both sides of the L:2. The OFC2 can be E L:2 = E 2 cos(ω0 t), where EL:1,2 denotes the amplitudes
given as of the optical fields released by the lasers, and ω0s′ are the
angular frequencies of the carrier signals. Similarly, the same
O FC2 = (O FC1 ± f R F ) + (L : 2 ± f R F ) (3) RF signal is applied to drive MZMs that can be given as
This equation represents that the OFC2 produces more carriers v R F (t) = V1 cos(ωc t), where V1 shows the amplitude and ωc
than the OFC generated by just superposing two OFCs [15]. presents the corresponding RF signal frequency. The output of
1188 IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 35, NO. 21, 1 NOVEMBER 2023

Fig. 2. A: output of MZM1 observed by the first spectrum analyzer; B: the coupled output observed by the second spectrum analyzer; C: the final output
observed by the third spectrum analyzer.
√ " ∞ #
the first stage MZM can be given as [22]: 2 X
+ E2e iw0 t
(e + e ) · i Jn (γ1 )e
iϕ1 inπ n inwc t

i π Vdc/V +π V1/V . cos ωc t

 
2

√ n=−∞
E M1 = 2/2E 1 e iω0 t 
e π1 π1
(6)
In Eqn. (6), Jn denotes the nth order of the Bessel function,
π V1/ . cos ωc t
 
−i Vπ1 and n shows the sidebands induced by the linked OFCs,
+e  respectively, in the Eqn. (6), the harmonic components have
fixed frequency spacing with the frequency ωc /2π generated
√ h i by the microwave source. The harmonic components are in
= 2/2E 1 eiω0 t ei(ϕ1 +γ1 cos ωc t) + e−i(γ1 cos ωc t) (4) great numbers in this equation compared to the other cited
Equation (4) shows the generation of sidebands at the output letters. Equations 4,5, and 6 are aligned with equations 1, 2,
of MZM1 at both sides of the central frequency (ω0 ), where ω0 and 3. Hence it can be deployed in optical communications to
and ωc present the angular frequencies of the carrier and the support high data rates. The optical power of the final output
RF signal, respectively. E 1 is the amplitude of the laser L:1, having Nth order can be given as:
ϕ1 πdc /Vπ is the phase shift induced by the biasing voltage, 3 X∞
and γ1 = π V1 /Vπ1 is the modulation index of both the P = P0 ei(N −M) (eiϕ1 + ei Mπ )i N Jn (γ1 ) (7)
MZMs, where V1 shows the amplitude of the RF signal driving 4 n=−∞
both the optical modulators and Vπ 1 is the half-wave voltage In equation (7), P0 is the optical carrier’s power, and N,
of MZM1, which is also true for MZM2. After combining M shows the order of the sidebands. The synthesis of many
the second lasers with the MZM1’s output, the combined modulation sidebands gives the intensity of the Nth comb
signal can be given as: Ecoup = E M1 + E 2 eiω0 t , passed line. Since the saturation input power limits the intensity
through the second MZM. The output of MZM2 can be modulator’s driving oscillating signal, the MZM’s modulation
given as: index is fixed accordingly. Hence, the intensity of each line
can be influenced by the phase difference between the lines,
h i
E M2 = (1/2)E 1 eiω0 t ei(ϕ1 +γ1 cos ωc t) + e−i(γ1 cos ωc t)
h i the modulation index, and the DC biasing of the MZMs, which
· ei(ϕ1 +γ1 cos ωc t) + e−i(γ1 cos ωc t) also controls the smoothness.
The proposed model uses frequency heterodyning of two
√ h i
+ ( 2/2)E 2 eiω0 t ei(ϕ1 +γ1 cos ωc t) + e−i(γ1 cos ωc t) OFCs, increasing the overall bandwidth. Detailed simulations
have been conducted to prove its validity. The basic foundation
(5) of this concept is revealed by deploying two lasers having a
After applying the Jacobi-Anger expansion on Eqn. (5) the frequency difference of 1.38 THz between the central frequen-
final output of EM2 can be given as: cies. This difference is calculated after carefully observing
" ∞ ∞
#2 the research findings and analyzing the results to find the
1 X X
best possible outcome regarding the number of comb lines,
E M2 = E 1 e iw0 t
· (e + e )·i Jn (γ1 )e
iϕ1 inπ n inwc t
2 n=−∞ n=−∞
their amplitude differences, and the effective bandwidth. The
ULLAH et al.: DEO COMB GENERATOR BY HETERODYNING TWO COMBS
central frequency of the laser L:1 and L:2 is 193.08 THz, and
194.46 THz, respectively. Each laser is operated at a power
of 1.3 dBm and a linewidth of 10 MHz. Figure 1 (A) depicts
the deployment of three optical frequency spectrum analyzers
designated A, B, and C, one each for the first MZM, the
output of the MZM1 linked with the laser L:2, and C for
the final result. The laser L:2 is carefully connected to the
band produced by the laser L:1. Therefore, according to the
heterodyning phenomena, by mixing two frequencies, F1 and
F2, many comb lines are generated that can be described
using equations 1 and 4. The L:1 is connected to the first
MZM driven by the RF signal∼20 GHz with a phase of 900 .
The symmetry factor and extinction ratio of the MZMs were
carefully controlled. The MZM is an EO intensity modulator
based on the interferometric principle, which consists of a
pair of couplers of 3 dB connected by a waveguide of the
same length. Frequency heterodyning occurs when a light
source and an RF signal drive the MZM. At the output of
MZM1, around 45 comb lines are generated, out of which
35 tones are highly stable, having 0.1 to 6 dBm amplitude
difference, shown in Fig.2(a). The OFC generated by MZM1
is coupled with the second laser by a coupler with a coupling
coefficient∼0.5. The Cp’s output is shown in Figure 2(b).
After coupling the two signals, a wideband of frequencies is
achieved, having more than 160 comb lines, out of which 137
are well flattened, shown in Figure 2(c), and can be deployed
in optical communications.
The lowest frequency of the comb line with a good TNR of
over 40 dBm is 192.26 THz, whereas the highest frequency
at the opposite is 194.98 THz. The achieved bandwidth of the
comb is around 2.74 THz, covering most of the optical C-band.
The OFC produced in the current technique has a 0.1 to 6 dB
amplitude difference among the high and low-frequency comb
lines at both sides, while the central carriers have an amplitude
difference of around 0.1 to 3 dB. Detailed information about
the comb lines’ flatness is demonstrated on the right side
in Figure 2. In summary, by adding one laser source, the
bandwidth and number of comb lines of the DEO comb are
greatly enhanced and can offer far better performance com-
pared to the traditional approach of the cascading configuration
of electro-optic modulators and, in some cases, superseding
the performance of 3-4 modulators. The proposed scheme can
generate ∼137 healthy and stable carriers with an effective
bandwidth of ∼2.74 THz. The proposed model is based on
the simulation work of MATLAB and OptiSystem.
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