SOA Amplified 100 Gb/s/λ PAM-4 TDM-PON Supporting PR-30 Power Budget with >18 dB Dynamic Range

Zhengxuan Li,Siyu Luo,Yingxiong Song,Yuming Wang,Yuwen Li,Fan Yin

doi:10.3390/mi13030342

Abstract

Semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is considered an excellent candidate for power amplification at O-band due to its low cost and small footprint. In passive optical networks (PONs), SOA is popular as a booster and pre-amplifier to improve the link power budget. However, whether as a booster or pre-amplifier, SOA will induce different degrees of nonlinearity when the output power is high, which degrades the transmission performance of the system and leads to a limited receiver dynamic range. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of using SOA in both transmitter and receiver sides for power budget improvement in 100 Gb/s/λ four-level pulsed amplitude modulation (PAM-4) time division multiplexed PON (TDM-PON) system at O-band. For compensating the linear and nonlinear impairments induced by transceivers and SOA, a look-up-table (LUT) pre-compensation at the optical line terminal (OLT) side and a simple feed-forward equalizer (FFE) at the optical network unit (ONU) side are adopted for downstream transmission. For upstream transmission, a 2nd-order Volterra nonlinear equalizer (VNLE) is utilized at the OLT side, and no pre-compensation is used at the transmitter of the ONU, which releases the digital signal processing (DSP) pressure of ONUs in a multi-user scenario. For the soft-decision FEC (SD-FEC) threshold (1 × 10−2), the IEEE PR-30 power budget requirement is met, and >18 dB dynamic range is achieved in both 25 km downstream and upstream transmission.

Highlights

Driven by the rapidly growing demand for emerging applications, such as the internet of things (IoT), 4K/8K-HD video streaming services and virtual reality (VR), the need for higher access network capacity is involved in offering a better user experience
A system based on 25 Gb/s nominal line rate has been defined by the IEEE 802.3ca 50 G Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON)
We investigate the performance of using Semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) as a booster and preamplifier for power budget improvement in 100 Gb/s/λ PAM-4 TDM-passive optical networks (PONs) at O-band

Summary

Introduction

Driven by the rapidly growing demand for emerging applications, such as the internet of things (IoT), 4K/8K-HD video streaming services and virtual reality (VR), the need for higher access network capacity is involved in offering a better user experience. A bunch of broadband fiber access network technologies is evolving to support the accelerating capacity growth requirements. Among these access technologies, the passive optical network (PON). Thanks to the efforts of the PON standardization groups, beyond 10 Gb/s line rate per wavelength of PON systems has successfully been conducted. A system based on 25 Gb/s nominal line rate has been defined by the IEEE 802.3ca 50 G Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON). O-band is a better choice in both high-speed PON downstream and upstream links because its lower CD helps to overcome inter-symbol interference (ISI) [5], and it has been successfully selected as the downstream wavelength of

Methods

Results

Conclusion