Signal Remodulation of OFDM-QAM for Long Reach Carrier Distributed Passive Optical Networks

The passive optical network (PON) using orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a subject of many research works recently. The OFDM signal is especially good for long reach (LR)-PON due to its high tolerance to chromatic dispersion and high spectral efficiency. We study, for the first time, the possibility of using OFDM for signal remodulation in LR-PONs. Three different colorless optical networking unit (ONU) architectures, electroabsorption modulator-based, reflective semiconductor optical amplifier-based and injection-locked Fabry-Perot laser diode-based ONUs, are tested and compared. Error-free operations are achieved in 100-km fiber transmission without dispersion compensation.