System performance analysis of time-division-multiplexing passive optical network using directly modulated lasers or colorless optical network units

As a promising technology for broadband communication, passive optical network (PON) has been deployed to support the last-mile broadband access network. In particular, time-division-multiplexing PON (TDM-PON) has been widely used owing to its mature technology and low cost. To practically implement TDM-PONs, the combination of intensity modulation and direct detection is a very promising technique because it achieves cost reduction in system installation and maintenance. However, the current intensity-modulation and direct-detection TDM-PON still suffers from some problems, which mainly include a high-power penalty, detrimental Brillouin backscattering (BB), and so on. Thus, using directly modulated lasers (DMLs) and colorless optical network units (ONUs), respectively, two intensity-modulation and direct-detection TDM-PON architectures are proposed. Using VPI (an optical simulation software developed by VPIphotonics company) simulators, we first analyze the influences on DML-based intensity-modulation and direct-detection TDM-PON (system 1) performances, which mainly include bit error rate (BER) and power penalty. Next, the BB effect on the BER of the intensity-modulation and direct-detection TDM-PON that uses colorless ONUs (system 2) is also investigated. The simulation results show that: (1) a low-power penalty is achieved without degrading the BER of system 1, and (2) the BB can be effectively reduced using phase modulation of the optical carrier in system 2. (C) The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.