OPTICAL COMB GENERATOR

摘要

The invention relates to an optical comb generator (500) for generating a plurality of optical sub-carriers (507) from a primary lightwave carrier (506), the optical comb generator comprising an optical pulse-shaping circuit (502) arranged to modulate the amplitude of the primary lightwave carrier (506) in response to an electrical driving signal (509) so as to form a sequence of optical pulses (512), an optical phase modulation circuit (504) arranged to modulate the phase of the sequence of optical pulses in response to a phase-shifted electrical driving signal (510) so as to form the plurality of optical sub-carriers (507), wherein the optical comb generator further comprises a phase shift unit (516) adapted to generate the phase-shifted electrical driving signal (510) by shifting the phase of a copy of the electrical driving signal (509), the phase shift of the phase-shifted electrical driving signal (510) with respect to the electrical driving signal (509) being such that the operation of the optical pulse-shaping circuit (502) is synchronized with the operation of the optical phase modulation circuit (504).