COL 9(12), 120603(2011) CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS December 10, 2011
10 Gb/s symmetric WDM-PON using stable
multi-longitudinal mode Brillouin/SOA fiber laser as
upstream colorless source
Lilin Yi (ÂÂÂnnn)
1∗
, Zhengxuan Li (oooààà)
1
, Tao Zhang (ÜÜÜ 777)
1
, Dong Lin ( ÀÀÀ)
2
,
Yi Dong (ÂÂÂ ÀÀÀ)
1
, and Weisheng Hu (¥¥¥))))
1
1
State Key Lab of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Department of Electronic Engineering,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
2
Oclaro Shanghai R&D Center, Shanghai 200533, China
∗
Corresp onding author: lilinyi@sjtu.edu.cn
Received June 14, 2011; accepted August 15, 2011; posted online October 24, 2011
We prop ose a stable multi-longitudinal Brillouin/semiconductor fiber laser (BSFL) as the upstream source
in a bidirectional single-fiber wavelength-division multiplexing-passive optical network (WDM-PON). The
downstream wavelength serves as the pump of the BSFL. Brillouin-frequency-shifted (∼10.8 GHz) upstream
carrier is generated to suppress the Rayleigh backscattering and back reflection-induced crosstalk. The
stable multi-longitudinal operation of the BSFL, attributed to the four-wave mixing (FWM) effect in the
semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) reduces the difficulty of generating a stable single-longitudinal
fiber laser-based upstream carrier. Bidirectional symmetric transmission at 10 Gb/s over a 12.5-km single
mo de fiber with less than 2-dB power penalty is demonstrated.
OCIS codes: 060.2330, 060.4265.
doi: 10.3788/COL201109.120603.
Bandwidth demand in access networks has increased
rapidly. As a result, wavelength-division multiplexing-
passive optical network (WDM-PON) has become a
promising option because of its high bandwidth accessi-
ble property. The colorless optical network unit (ONU) is
one of the main research topics in this field. Centralized
light sources in the optical line terminal (OLT) have been
considered as a good solution. In OLT, the downstream
wavelength is reused at the ONU for upstream data
modulation
[1]
or another set of laser sources differing
from the downstream ones are specifically assigned to
upstream carriers
[2]
. The wavelength reuse techniques
are limited by the Rayleigh backscattering and back
reflection-induced crosstalk in a single-fiber bidirectional
transmission scenario
[3]
, resulting in a power penalty
of 5–9 dB
[4]
. Adoption of two-fiber system becomes
necessary although it increases the system deployment
difficulty. Furthermore, two sets of laser sources in the
OLT will increase the system cost.
Complicated modulation schemes have been adopted
to generate the frequency difference between the
downstream and upstream wavelengths which is in-
tended to suppress the Rayleigh backscattering-induced
crosstalk
[2,4−6]
. A hybrid single longitudinal mode Bril-
louin/erbium fiber laser (BEFL) has been proposed to
mitigate the Rayleigh backscattering and back reflection-
induced crosstalk by frequency-shifting the downstream
wavelength away by ∼0.08 nm using a stimulated Bril-
louin scattering (SBS) effect for the upstream carrier. A
1.25-Gb/s symmetric transmission over a 20-km single
mode fiber (SMF) has been demonstrated
[7]
. However,
the single-longitudinal operation is relatively difficult to
realize. Mode-hopping is unavoidable due to environmen-
tal fluctuations, which limit its practical applications.
Furthermore, the BEFL is mainly operated around the
gain peak of the erbium-doped fiber (EDF) of ∼1 558
nm and the wavelength tunable range is only several
nanometers
[8]
. Therefore, achieving a colorless ONU re-
quires a tunable filter to tune the output wavelength of
the BEFL. This increases ONU costs.
In this letter, we propose a hybrid multi-longitudinal
mode Brillouin/semiconductor fiber laser (BSFL) where
a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is incorporated
to Brillouin fiber laser. This serves as the colorless
upstream source for Rayleigh backscattering and back
reflection-induced crosstalk mitigation. A stable multi-
longitudinal mode operation of the BSFL is achieved due
to the four-wave mixing (FWM) effect of the SOA, which
enables high-speed upstream data modulation and trans-
mission. Moreover, the effect reduces the difficulty of
generating a single longitudinal mode fiber laser. The
BSFL can operate within the entire gain bandwidth of
the SOA
[9]
and the output wavelength is only determined
by the downstream wavelength. Therefore, it is a color-
less laser source that does not require a tunable filter. In
this letter, the bidirectional symmetric transmission of
non-return-to-zero (NRZ) data at 10 Gb/s over 12.5-km
SMF has been demonstrated with less than 2-dB power
penalty using the BSFL as the upstream source. It should
be noted that the proposed scheme is effective on any
downstream signal with a strong carrier, such as quad-
rant amplitude modulation (QAM) and orthogonal fre-
quency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals.
A bidirectional single-fiber WDM-PON architecture
employing the BSFL as upstream source is depicted in
Fig. 1. The ONU consists of an optical circulator (OC),
BSFL, a downstream optical receiver, and an upstream
Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM). The downstream sig-
nal is launched into the BSFL through the OC to serve as
the Brillouin pump. The BSFL has two outputs, namely,
1671-7694/2011/120603(4) 120603-1
c
° 2011 Chinese Optics Letters