Optical Power Budget Enhancement in 50–90 Gb/s IM-DD PONs With NOMA-CAP and SOA-Based Amplification

We report experimental results of a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) for optical amplification in a 50-90 Gb/s IM-DD optical access system using non-orthogonal multiple access multiplexing combined with multi-band carrierless amplitude phase modulation format (NOMA-CAP). Specifically, the SOA has been investigated as both booster and pre-amplifier for downstream applications in PONs. The measured optical power budgets resulting from performing booster amplification and pre-amplification simultaneously, assuming a BER threshold at 2.2 × 10
^-3
, are 28.7(23.7) dB and 23.6(18.9) dB at 50(90) Gb/s for the strong and weak NOMA levels, respectively, compared to the budgets for the strong and weak NOMA levels of 12.4(8.7) dB and 9.4(5.2) dB when no optical amplification is used.