Symmetric 10 Gbps PON Operating With a Single Laser Over 31 dB of ODN Loss

We propose a fully bidirectional and symmetrical 10 Gb/s on-off keying Passive Optical Network (PON) solution, using the same wavelength in both upstream and downstream directions. Thanks to the remodulation performed by the optical network unit, it is able to transport 20 Gb/s per wavelength using only one optical source for the full network, regardless of the number of users. The system is based on direct detection in downstream and self-coherent detection in upstream, over a standard of 31-dB loss splitter-based PON. We experimentally demonstrate the proposed architecture over a realistic PON fiber plant with one wavelength and commercial component. We then discuss the potential application of our solution in an ITU-T G.989 NG-PON2 point-to-point WDM architecture.