A photonic-assisted periodic triangular-shaped pulses generator based on FWM effect in an SOA

Abstract We propose a photonic-assisted triangular-shaped pulse train generator based on four-wave mixing effect (FWM) in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). A dual-parallel Mach–Zehnder operated at quadrupling RF modulation is employed to generate two primary sidebands (±2nd) in spectrum of the triangular-shaped pulse. Then the FWM effect leads to generation of two new frequency components. By setting the modulation index and bias current of the SOA properly, the generated harmonics of optical intensity can be corresponding to the Fourier components of typical periodic triangular pulses. Finally, a triangular pulse train with tunable repetition rate can be obtained. Numerical simulations have been taken to evaluate the impact of several key parameters to make the scheme more practical.