Optical Signal Processing Aided by Optical Frequency Combs

This paper highlights certain optical signal processing (OSP) functions that can be achieved when using optical frequency combs. An optical frequency comb can provide many narrow-linewidth, mutually coherent, and equidistant optical carriers, making it a potentially useful tool for facilitating efficient signal processing functions. In this paper, we explore the following general topics: (a) tailoring a comb for enhanced usability in OSP, such as inserting more lines, generating Nyquist pulse trains, and regenerating a comb at a distance; (b) achieving a tunable linear and nonlinear filter for correlation, equalization, and Volterra filtering, and (c) enabling various transmission and networking functions, such as multicasting, format conversion, and dynamic bandwidth allocation.