Colorless components for WDM-based optical access networks

This paper presents our work carried out in the colorless-component technologies for high bit-rate optical access networks, which are based on WDM-PON (wavelength division multiplexed passive optical networks). The colorless concept consists in using identical and wavelength-independent components that will act as the generic transmitter in WDM-PON systems. The transmitted wavelength is imposed, for each colorless component, by an external optical signal. Our studies include two types of colorless components: The Injection-Locked Fabry-Perot laser (IL-FP) and the Reflective Electro-Absorption Modulator integrated with a Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (REAMSOA). For the IL-FP, the properties of the component strongly depend on the injected optical signal. We demonstrate the improvement by injection-locking of the laser’s performances in terms of intensity noise, chirp and bandwidth. For the REAM-SOA, the static properties such as reflection gain and noise characteristic are examined. We demonstrate the feasibility of the REAM-SOA in a transmission experiment in a PON configuration at 10 Gbps with up to 25 km of SMF, using remote modulation technique.