Using single side-band modulation for colorless OFDM-WDM access network to alleviate Rayleigh backscattering effects

Abstract

In this investigation, we demonstrate a new colorless orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing (OFDM) wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON) system with Rayleigh backscattering (RB) noise mitigation. Here, only a single laser source at the central office (CO) is needed to produce the downstream signal and distributed continuous-wave (CW) carrier, which will then be modulated at the optical networking unit (ONU) to produce the upstream signal. Single side-band (SSB) modulation is used to wavelength-shift the distributed CW carrier, which will be launched into a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA) based ONU for directly modulation of 5.15 Gbps OFDM upstream signal. To avoid the radio-frequency (RF) power fading and chromatic fiber dispersion, the four-band OFDM modulation is proposed to generate a 40 Gbps downstream when a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) with -0.7 chirp parameter is used. Hence, the RB circumvention can be centralized in the CO. Moreover, the signal performances of downstream and upstream are also studied and discussed in this measurement. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America