All-Optical Virtual Private Network in OFDM-PON Using Microwave Photonic Filter

We propose and demonstrate a novel all-optical virtual private network (VPN) using a microwave photonic filter, which enables inter-communications among optical network units in a passive optical network system. In our scheme, an optical coupler based recirculating delay line is used at optical line terminal as an optical subsystem to implement a microwave photonic-bandpass filter (MP-BPF). The periodic passbands of an MP-BPF are used to transmit VPN signal, whereas stopbands are used for conventional upstream transmission. The proposed system has two critical issues, optical phase-induced intensity noise in the MP-BPF and Rayleigh back-scattering interference by a single-fiber loop back link. To overcome the issues, an RF clipping tone based spectrum-broadening technique is applied to uplink transmitter. The proposed all-optical VPN system is tolerant to wavelength of VPN optical carrier, and enables multi-VPN data transmission using multi-passbands of MP-BPF.