Optical Overlay of Two Independent Multicast Streams on a WDM Passive Optical Network

We propose a novel scheme to perform optical multicast overlay of two independent multicast data streams on a wavelength-division-multiplexed passive optical network. By controlling a sinusoidal clock signal and an optical switch at the optical line terminal, the delivery of the two multicast data, being carried by the generated optical tones, can be independently and flexibly controlled. Simultaneous transmissions of 10-Gb/s unicast downstream and upstream data as well as two independent 10-Gb/s multicast data are successfully demonstrated.