Low SNR difference Nyquist-WDM channels with optical sinc-shaped pulses based on flat electro-optic frequency combs

We experimentally demonstrate Nyquist wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) channels with a low signalto-noise ratio (SNR) difference based on flat electro-optic combs (EOCs), which reduce the interchannel crosstalk penalty in Nyquist-WDM transmission with no guard band. The five Nyquist-WDM channels are generated through the insertion of uniform and coherent lines around each line of the EOCs from a dual-parallel Mach- Zehnder modulator. For the five channels, the normalized root-mean-square error of optical sine-shaped pulses at a repetition rate of 9 GHz is between 1.23% and 2.04%. The SNRs of the Nyquist signal can be better than 30 dB by using flat EOCs with a narrow linewidth as WDM sources, and the difference in SNR is less than 0.6 dB for the WDM channels. The transmission performance of five Nyquist-WDM channels with no guard band is compared in a 56 km fiber link. The results show that our scheme provides a minimum interchannel sensitivity penalty of 0.7 dB at the forward-error-correction limit. The Nyquist-WDM channels with low SNR difference can effectively improve the communication performance of the Nyquist-WDM system. (C) 2020 Optical Society of America