Performance sensitivity to system parameters in multiwavelength super-continuum sources

We determine the fundamental cause of performance variation as a function of system parameters, in supercontinuum (SC) sources in a normal-dispersive fiber, with high-order nonlinearity effects included. The variations in the sliced-pulse quality with respect to the soliton order N, the input peak power, the slicing filter bandwidth, as well as the optimization of the fiber length and the slicing wavelength, are numerically investigated. The results show that, at a constant average input power, narrower input pulses (or smaller N) can help achieve broader output spectrum but at the expense of degradation in the sliced-pulse quality. Better quality of the sliced pulses can be obtained by using a slicing filter with wider filter bandwidth. Besides, the input peak power is found to have significant impact on the choice of the suitable slicing wavelength. These results can facilitate the optimization of system parameters in designing SC sources for optical transmission applications.