Optical frequency combs (OFCs) generated in microresonators can substitute for widely employed power-hungry laser arrays, ensuring spectral and energy efficiency in wavelength-division multiplexed passive optical networks (WDM-PONs). Here, we propose a realistic design of a WDM-PON based on a silica microresonator generating an OFC in the dissipative Kerr soliton regime and present a corresponding theoretical study, paying particular attention to the impact of the comb linewidth on the characteristics of the communication system. Using intensive numerical simulation, data transmission performance in an eight-channel 100 GHz spaced WDM-PON is investigated for OFC carrier linewidths of 100 kHz, 1 MHz, 10 MHz, and 100 MHz. We show that microresonator-based OFCs with linewidths of up to 100 MHz can be used for a non-return-to-zero on-off keying modulated data transmission system and give an acceptable bit error rate (BER). Results show that the narrower the linewidth, the lower the BER is. The data transmission results show that error-free data transmission is possible with a BER of 4.4 10⁻¹² for 100 kHz OFC carrier linewidth, providing 80 Gbps of total data rate on eight OFC generated carriers.

微谐振器中产生的光频梳 (OFC) 可以替代广泛使用的耗电激光器阵列，确保波分复用无源光网络 (WDM-PON) 的光谱和能源效率。在这里，我们提出了基于二氧化硅微谐振器的 WDM-PON 的现实设计，在耗散克尔孤子机制中产生 OFC，并提出了相应的理论研究，特别关注梳状线宽对通信系统特性的影响. 使用密集的数值模拟，针对 100 kHz、1 MHz、10 MHz 和 100 MHz 的 OFC 载波线宽，研究了八通道 100 GHz 间隔 WDM-PON 中的数据传输性能。我们表明，线宽高达 100 MHz 的基于微谐振器的 OFC 可用于不归零开关键控调制数据传输系统，并提供可接受的误码率 (BER)。结果表明，线宽越窄，误码率越低。数据传输结果表明可以实现无差错数据传输，BER 为 4.4 10⁻¹²对于 100 kHz OFC 载波线宽，在八个 OFC 生成的载波上提供 80 Gbps 的总数据速率。