Power Budget of Ultra-Dense Virtual-Carrier-Assisted DD MB-OFDM Next-Generation PON

An ultra-dense multi-band orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) passive optical network (PON) with a dedicated band capacity per user of 2.5 or 10 Gb/s is demonstrated experimentally. A band spacing of 6.25 GHz and a low-cost virtual carrier-assisted direct-detection (DD) scheme are employed. The proposed MB-OFDM PON shows a great potential in the context of next-generation optical access networks due to the low receiver bandwidth required, low-cost implementation, and high granularity, flexibility, and scalability provided. The power budget evaluated from the experimental results shows that the virtual carrier-assisted DD MB-OFDM solution is more suited to short-reach PONs. For a PON reach of 20 km and a band capacity of 2.5 Gb/s, the proposed network supports 128 users. For a band capacity of 10 Gb/s, the network supports 32 users in a PON with reach of 10 km.