Wavelength Sharing and Reuse in Dual-Band WDM-PON Systems Employing WRC-FPLDs

In this letter, for the first time, we propose a dual-band wavelength division multiplexed passive optical network (WDM-PON) architecture that enables efficient nonoverlapping wavelength reuse and mitigates bidirectional transmission impairments. Weak-resonant-cavity Fabry-Perot laser diodes (WRC-FPLDs) with gain spectra across C-band and L-band are implemented to achieve desirable colorless, uncooled, and inexpensive optical network units. The side mode suppression ratio and modulation performance of the injection-locked WRC-FPLDs with operational wavelengths from 1550 to 1580 nm are studied. The 25-km transmission experiments have been demonstrated, where the injection-locked WRC-FPLDs are directly modulated with up to 5-Gb/s on-off-keying (OOK) upstream signals. Improved signal quality with bit-error rates <;10
^-9
is obtained which confirms that the dual-band architecture with wavelength sharing can be a potential candidate for future WDM-PON deployments.