AWG-based device for a WDM overlay PON in the 1.5 μm band

A novel concept has been developed for overlaying a power-splitting passive optical network (PON) in one wavelength band with a wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) PON in another wavelength band. An eight-channel device fabricated in silica technique shows an insertion loss of 3.5 dB and a crosstalk of -23 dB for the WDM channels around 1.55 μm wavelength. The 1 to 8 splitting function at 1.50 μm wavelength has an additional penalty of -1 dB and a uniformity of /spl plusmn/0.5 dB.