OFC/NFOEC 2008

a1567_1.pdf
JThA97.pdf

Bidirectional 1.25Gb/s colorless RSOA based WDM-PON

using Suppressed Optical Carrier and Polarization Beam
Splitter
Dong-Hyeon Kim, Piao Yin Xing, Yong-Yuk Won, Soo-Jin Park* and Sang-Kook Han
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Yonsei University, Shinchon-dong, Seodaemoon-gu, Seoul, Korea,
Tel: +82-2-2123-4016, Fax: +82-2-364-4016
Email: skhan@yonsei.ac.kr
*Korea Telecom, Telecommunication Network Labortary, 463-1, Yusung-gu, Daejon 305-348
Tel:+82-10-3454-6482
Email:soojin@kt.co.kr

Abstract: We have demonstrated a novel scheme of reflective semi-conductor optical amplifier (RSOA)
based bidirectional gigabit WDM-PON using suppressed optical carrier (SOC) and polarization beam
splitter(PBS). While LiNbO3 Mach-Zehnder Modulator (LN-MZM) located at the central office (CO)
generate 4 GHz SOC as the seed light for uplink transmission, RSOA at CO modulate the downlink data.
At optical network units (ONU), another RSOA modulate the 4GHz SOC for uplink. The optical beating
interference (OBI) was avoided by keeping the polarization status between down stream data signal and
SOC orthogonal each other.
©2008 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (250.0250) Optoelectronics; (250.5980) Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

1. Introduction
The data, voice, video service has being complicated and varied. The many kinds of users ask a wide bandwidth
of data to meet increasing data rate. In the near future, the demand of high data rate will surge due to high quality
Video on Demand (VoD), home shopping, and home-working. To meet these demands, several methods have been
already proposed. One of the best methods is wavelength division multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-
PON) which is very useful system for providing ONUs with dramatically huge data, network security as well as
protocol transparency [1]. In terms of the number of wavelengths and cost effectiveness, WDM-PON using RSOA
has merits for that it cuts use of wavelength by half compared with other one and makes ONUs cheap. In this
system, RSOA is usually used to rewrite data and gets gain simultaneously. As using GS-RSOA, input bit pattern is
squeezed in output of GS-RSOA [2]. Unfortunately, the erased bit pattern is not perfectly erased and that would be
acted as cross talk noise on upstream. To avoid this draw back, WDM/SCM-PON unconcerned with re-modulation
is proposed [3]. In this paper, we have proposed a novel WDM-PON adapting LN-MZM and Polarization Beam
Splitter. That scheme has no draw back of data re-modulation because the seed light of SOC is used for uplink. A
PBS is used to suppress an OBI noise which is structural problem of interferometer structure.

2. Experiment and Results

WDM-PON employing RSOA and LN-MZM offers several advantages. RSOA can be used as a modulator
which accomplishes both modulation and amplification functions for downlink without dependence of wavelength.
Analog modulated signal by LN-MZM can be used as a uplink optical source for many ONU instead of generating
source for each ONU separately [4]. Also the use of RSOA makes Optical Line Terminal (OLT) and Optical
Network Units (ONU) colorless. We utilized these advantages of RSOA and LN-MZM. Fig.1 shows the
experimental setup of the proposed WDM-PON scheme. A DFB-LD (1550nm) with an injection current of 16mA
was used for optical source in CO. After passing through a 3dB splitter and the optical light in one arm was
amplified to 10dBm which is the max input power to LN-MZM we have by EDFA considering a high insertion loss
of LN-MZM and the quality of uplink. The other arm is fed to RSOA which were biased 30mA for a downlink
modulation(1.25Gb/s @ 2Vpp, PRBS:223-1). Fig. 1-(a) shows the modulated SOC. To make up SOC, LN-MZM was

978-1-55752-855-1/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE

 OFC/NFOEC 2008
a1567_1.pdf
JThA97.pdf

biased at 4GHz, 20dBm @ Vpi: 4.6V. SOC light is separated into two polarization components of slow axis and fast
axis by PBS. Fig. 1-(b) shows that we can get higher carrier suppression due to theirs polarization ratio difference
between center mode and side mode after PBS. When these two lights are merged before transmission, optical
beating interference noise can be occurred since this scheme is a basically interferometer structure. But we reduced
OBI noise by making two lights orthogonal by detuning polarization controller because these two lights after PBS
and RSOA were uni-polarized differently. Fig. 2 shows that improved the downlink sensitivity up to -18dBm as
much as it can get is archived by making the lights from PBS and RSOA orthogonal which means reduction of
baseband OBI noise. When it comes to optical power combine of outputs of LN-MZM and RSOA, the power of
SOC signal set to be larger than that of RSOA since the SOC travels double length of 20Km. The merged light is
transmitted to ONU and 3dB coupler is used to divide into two arms in ONU. One of divided lights goes to PD for
downlink data detection as shown in Fig. 1-(d). The other goes to RSOA2 in ONU for uplink modulation. At
RSOA2, the light is modulated at 1.25Gb/s. The modulated light was transmitted back to CO for uplink as shown in
Fig. 1-(f). A 8GHz band uplink signal should be down-converted for uplink detection as shown in Fig. 1-(e). As
shown Fig. 3, we have measured the RF spectrum of downlink and uplink signal. The downlink data is located in
baseband, the uplink data is mixed in 8GHz band which comes from modulated SOC in RSOA2.
In this proposed WDM-PON, We can use two kinds of lights with different wavelength. Even though two kinds
of light are very close to each other, they are literally different wavelength. Because of that, if RSOA2 at ONU is
operating in gain saturation (GS-RSOA), a cross gain modulation (XGM) will happen [5]. When input optical power
input RSOA2 at ONU was over such a level to meet gain saturation. XGM occurred and the SOC for uplink can be
modulated at downlink data (1.25Gb/s) without uplink modulation in RSOA2. Consequently, XGM has adversely an
affect on uplink signal. As shown in Fig. 4, we can know that when input optical power to RSOA is over -17dBm,
so to speak, RSOA is gain saturated, uplink performance becomes worse because of XGM. But if the optical input
power to RSOA is below -17dBm, we can get uplink transmission successfully.
Fig. 5 shows the measured BERs of up and downlink transmission and eye diagrams. For downlink transmission,
even if 20km transmission was considered, there is no difference between BTB and 20Km downlink transmission on
BER. On the other hand, uplink BER curves of both BTB and 20km was different by 3dB because of the relative
long transmission length of 40Km and possible scattering noises and two mode of SOC could be experienced hard
relatively.

3. Conclusions
We have proposed and demonstrated bidirectional gigabit WDM-PON transmission using SOC and PBS which
shares the same wavelength channel. At CO, the SOC was made at CO for uplink optical source in advance for all
channel. By using this technique, we can succeed gigabit bidirectional transmission without an additional light
source and drawback of re-modulation in RSOA. A PBS makes the possible OBI noise in this scheme the
minimum. The proposed scheme is colorless due to usage of RSOA both in ONU and CO. Further more, the
increased optical power dynamic range to RSOA is expected which is critical in conventional re-modulation scheme
of RSOA. This scheme would be useful in applications of cost effective and colorless gigabit bidirectional optical
access network.

4. References

[1] R. Olshansky, P.M. Hill, E., V. Lanzisera, “Subcarrier multiplexed lightwave network for broadband distribution”, Journal of Lightwave
Technology, Vol. 7, Issue 9, 1329-1342 (1989)
[2] W-R Lee, M-Y Park, S-H Cho, J-H Lee, C-Y Kim, G Jeong, B-W Kim, “Bidirectional WDM-PON based on Gain-Saturated Reflective
Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers ”, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, Vol. 17, No. 11, 2460-2462(2005)
[3] J-M Kang, S-K Han, “A novel hybrid WDM/SCM-PON sharing wavelength for Up-and down link using reflective Semiconductior optical
amplifier”, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, Vol.18, No.3, 502-504 (2006)
[4] D. Penninckx, Ph. Delansay, E. Noucherez, C. Fortin and Le Gouezigou, "InP/GaInAsP ∏ -phase-shifted Mach-Zehnder modulator for
wavelength-independent(1530nm-1560nm) propagation performance at 10Gbit/s transmission over standard dispersive fiber", Electronics Letters,
Vol.33, No.8, 687-698 (1997)
[5] D-X Huang, X-L Zhang, “All-optical wavelength conversion based on semiconductor optical amplifiers”, Optoelectronics, Proceedings of the
Sixth Chinese Symposium, 255-258(2003)
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a1567_1.pdf
JThA97.pdf

Fig. 1. Experimental setup of proposed WDM-PON

6G(withoutPBS)
5G(withoutPBS)
-9 4G(withoutPBS) 0 Uplink 1.25Gb/s 8GHz
-10 3G(withoutPBS)
5G(withPBS) -10 Downlink 1.25Gb/s
Receiver Sensitivity(dBm)

-11 5G(withPBS) -20

-12 4G(withPBS)
RF power(dBm)

3G(withPBS) -30
-13
-40
-14
-50
-15 Polarization multiplexing
-16 -60

-17 -70
-18 -80
-19 -90
2 4 6 8 10 12 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
MZM input optical power(dBm) Frequency(GHz)

Fig. 2. Improved downlink sensitivity with PBS Fig. 3. RF spectrum of up/downlink signals

Receiver Sensitivity
1E-3

1E-4

1E-5

1E-6
BER

1E-7

1E-8

1E-9

1E-10
-19.0 -18.5 -18.0 -17.5 -17.0 -16.5 -16.0 -15.5
Input optical power to RSOA@ONU(dBm)

Fig. 4. Receiver sensitivity for various input power Fig.5. BERs of up/downlink signals