Bidirectional WDM Access Architecture Employing Cascaded AWGs and RSOAs.

Abstract

Here we propose a bidirectional wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) access architecture employing cascaded cyclic arrayed waveguide gratings (AWGs) and reflective semiconductor optical amplifiers (RSOAs) for system applications mainly in wavelength routed fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks. These architectures can address multiple N 2 customers using N wavelengths by employing multiple NxN AWGs at the central office (CO) and multiple 1×N AWGs at the distribution points (DPs). A 20 km range colorless WDM passive optical network (WDM-PON) was demonstrated for both 4 Gbit/s downstream and 2.5 Gbit/s upstream signals respectively. The BER performance of our scheme demonstrates that our scheme is a practical solution to meet the data rate and cost-efficient of the optical links simultaneously in future access networks.