Free Space Optical Communication in Long-Reach Unidirectional Ring-Architecture Fiber Network

In the work, a ring-constructed wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) access system for delivering multiple free space optical (FSO) wireless signals is investigated. To reach the FSO transmission through single-mode fiber (SMF) connection, the optical wireless unit (OWU) and remote OWU are designed in the WDM network. The downstream and upstream WDM FSO channels could be transmitted in unidirectional propagation with the same wavelength. Hence, the presented ring-based WDM network not only can transmit the FSO signal, but also can circumvent the Rayleigh backscattering (RB) interferometric beat noise. In addition, according to the experimental results, the SMF and FSO transmission lengths can reach 50 km and 500 to 1000 m at the forward error correction (FEC) level without using optical amplification and dispersion compensation, respectively, when four WDM wavelengths are exploited experimentally for demonstration.