25.78-Gb/s Operation of RSOA for Next-Generation Optical Access Networks

We report the 25.78-Gb/s operation of the reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA) for the next-generation optical access network. For this purpose, we develop a butterfly-packaged RSOA and minimize the electrical parasitics. As a result, the modulation bandwidth of RSOA is improved from 2.2 to 3.2 GHz (which is the fundamental limit imposed by the carrier lifetime). In addition, the slope of the RSOA's frequency response curve is enhanced from -40 to -20 dB/decade. Using this butterfly-packaged RSOA, we have demonstrated the 25.78-Gb/s operation. The receiver sensitivity is measured to be -11 dBm with the help of the electronic equalization and forward-error-correction (FEC) techniques. To evaluate the possibility of implementing the 100-Gb/s passive optical network (PON) by using this RSOA and the coarse wavelength-division-multiplexing (CWDM) technique, we evaluate the BER performance at four different wavelengths in the C-band. The results show that the error-free transmission can be achieved in the wavelength range of 20 nm with a penalty less than 2 dB. Thus, we can realize the 100-Gb/s PON cost-effectively by utilizing the directly modulated RSOAs operating at 25 Gb/s.