Direct 10-Gb/s Modulation of a Single-Section RSOA in PONs With High Optical Budget

We experimentally demonstrate 10-Gb/s operation of a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA) for data transmission in passive optical networks, with optical power budgets of up to 28 dB. Besides a passive adaptation for the electrooptical response of the semiconductor device, neither active electronic equalization nor optical offset filtering was applied to enhance the modulation bandwidth of the RSOA. Error-free transmission without using error correcting codes can be obtained even for low RSOA input power values of -20 dBm.