FAULT LOCATION FOR WDM-PON
USING A MULTIPLE-LONGITUDINAL-
MODE LASER MODULATED BY
CHAOTIC WAVE
Hang Xu,
1,2
Bingjie Wang,
1,2
Jianguo Zhang,
1,2
Hong Han,
1,2
Li Liu,
1,2
Yuncai Wang,
1,2
and Anbang Wang
1,2
1
Key Laboratory of Advanced Transducers & Intelligent Control
System (Taiyuan University of Technology), Ministry of Education &
Shanxi Province, Taiyuan 030024, China; Corresponding author:
wanganbang@tyut.edu.cn
2
Institute of Optoelectronic Engineering, College of Physics &
Optoelectronics, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024,
China
Received 20 April 2015
ABSTRACT: We experimentally demonstrate a cost-effective method to
locate faults in wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical network
(WDM-PON) utilizing a multiple-longitudinal-mode Fabry–Perot semi-
conductor laser directly modulated by chaotic wave from a Colpitts
oscillator. Due to chaos modulation, every longitudinal mode of the
laser has chaotic intensity waveform. Using a tunable optical filter
selects a mode to detect the wavelength-matched branch of WDM-PON
using chaos correlation technique. Experimental results show that the
unterminated fiber end, mismatch connector and fiber breakpoint can be
preciously located. A detection range of approximately 75 km and a
range-independent spatial resolution of 14 cm are achieved.
V
C
2015
Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:2502–2506,
2015; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/
mop.29375
Key words: wavelength-division-multiplexing; passive optical network;
Colpitts oscillator; chaos; fault location
1. INTRODUCTION
Wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical network
(WDM-PON) is a promising solution for broadband access net-
work, because of its large capacity, high privacy and low inser-
tion loss [1,2]. It is important and convenient for
troubleshooting to diagnose each channel of WDM-PON at opti-
cal line terminal (OLT) [3,4]. Tunable optical time-domain
reflectometer (OTDR) using wavelength-tunable optical pulse
has been proposed for this purpose [5–7]. Unfortunately, the
pulse OTDR suffers from the tradeoff between spatial resolution
and dynamic range. The spatial resolution is usually limited to
about tens of meters, which is unsuitable for optical accessing
network that may suffer from dense events. The tradeoff can be
overcome using optical pulse sequence to replace single pulse
[8,9]. The dynamic range is increased through increasing
sequence length rather than pulse duration to improve energy.
However, high resolution requires an expensive high-speed
sequence generator and a wideband modulator.
Recently, a wavelength-tunable chaos OTDR has been pro-
posed to diagnose WDM-PON [10], in which a multiple-
longitudinal-mode Fabry–Perot laser diode (FP-LD) with mode-
selective feedback is used to generate wavelength-tunable chaos.
Benefiting from the delta-like autocorrelation function and broad
bandwidth of the chaotic light, a spatial resolution of 2 cm has
been achieved, which is no longer traded off against the dis-
tance. Following this work, other tunable chaotic light sources
have been proposed. In 2013, Xia et al. proposed a semiconduc-
tor optical amplifier (SOA) ring structure to generate optical
wideband chaos, consisting of a SOA and a polarization control-
ler (PC) which needs to be carefully adjusted [11]. In 2014,
Yang et al. proposed an erbium-doped fiber ring laser to gener-
ate the wavelength tunable chaotic laser, which comprises a
980 nm laser diode, an erbium-doped fiber, a 980/1550 nm
wavelength division multiplexer and a PC and so on [12]. How-
ever, from a practical point of view, in the above methods the
generation of wideband chaos is constructed by discrete optical
components, of which the stability and size pose a challenge for
their applications. The reason is the laser nonlinear dynamical
systems are very sensitive to the polarization of feedback light,
which is vulnerable to external disturbance. Moreover, the gen-
erated chaotic light usually has sidelobes in correlation trace
[13,14] induced by the delayed feedback resulting in a “ghost
peak” that causes misjudgment.
In this letter, we experimentally demonstrate a simple
method of fault detection for WDM-PON using a FP-LD which
is directly modulated by a chaotic signal generated from a Col-
pitts oscillator. Colpitts oscillator based on the nonlinearity of a
transistor with a high cutoff frequency can generate a chaotic
signal with a wide spectrum extending to a few GHz [15].
According our previous experiments, this spectral width of GHz
predicts a spatial resolution near ten centimeters, which is suffi-
cient for detection in WDM-PON. More importantly, compared
with the optical generation of chaos, Colpitts oscillator is com-
pact, stable and inexpensive as it is a small electronic integrated
circuit. In addition, the chaotic output of the Colpitts oscillator
possesses autocorrelation traces without obvious sidelobes
caused by feedback delay.
2. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
Figure 1 shows the experimental setup of the proposed method.
The chaotic wave generated from a Colpitts oscillator is ampli-
fied through an amplifier (AMP) with tunable gain, and then
used to directly modulate a multiple-longitudinal-mode FP-LD
to generate the multimode chaotic laser light. After amplified by
an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), a single-mode light is
filtered out from the chaotic laser output by a tunable fiber
Bragg grating (TFBG) with 23-dB linewidth of about 0.2 nm.
The TFBG’s tunable range is about 40 nm, from 1530 nm to
1570 nm. The filtered chaotic laser light is divided by a fiber
coupler into two paths: one (1%) is used as the reference light
and the other (99%) is used as the probe light. The probe light
is launched into the WDM-PON and its back-reflected light is
received through an optical circulator (OC2). The WDM-PON is
constructed with a 20 km feeder line and a 50-GHz-spaced
arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) with 16 channels. Both the
echo light and the reference light are converted into electrical
signals by a pair of identical avalanche photo detectors (APD)
with 1-GHz bandwidth and are recorded by a real-time oscillo-
scope (LeCroy SDA806Zi-A) with 6-GHz bandwidth. The fault
events can be located by calculating the correlation between the
reference and echo signal in a computer. By sweeping the wave-
length of the probe light, different optical branches can be
detected. An optical spectrum analyzer (Agilent 86140B) and a
RF spectrum analyzer (Agilent N9020A) are used to observe the
chaotic laser output.
3. GENERATION OF WAVELENGTH TUNABLE CHAOTIC
LASER LIGHT
In our experiments, the used Colpitts oscillator has an improved
configuration for generating high-frequency chaos, in which the
inductor is moved from the collector circuit of the transistor to
the base circuit [16]. Compared to the standard Colpitts circuit
[17–19], the improved oscillator can generate a chaotic signal
2502 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 57, No. 11, November 2015 DOI 10.1002/mop