Performance evaluation of an upgradable passive access network employing downstream WDM packet routing

摘要

Passive double-star (PDS) systems are currently being actively developed for implementing fiber-to-the-home (FTTH).~1 Upgrading these systems in terms of transmission distance and capacity has reached a bottleneck in that splitting loss using a star coupler has become a limiting factor. Recently demonstrated wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) passive optical network architecture based on the waveguide-grating router (WGR)~(2,3) seems to be a promising candidate for this purpose due to its constant power penalty irrespective of the splitting number. We propose here an architecture design that is upgradable from the PDS systems. We also demonstrate a 1-nm-spaced, 16-channel, 50-Mbit/s packet routing using an arrayed-waveguide grating (AWG) demultiplexer as a WGR and a superstructure-grating distributed-Bragg-reflector (SSG-DBR) laser as a single downstream light source.