SOA-based Noise Suppression in Spectrum-Sliced PONs: Impact of Bit-Rate and SOA Gain Recovery Time

摘要

Spectrum-sliced wavelength division multiplexing is becoming an attractive cost effective candidate for future passive optical networks. Since incoherent sources are used, excess intensity noise limits the achievable performances. Here, we propose to use semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) to mitigate this noise. We experimentally investigate the advantages and drawbacks of placing the SOA-based noise reduction at the optical line terminal (OLT) as well as at the optical network (ONU) unit (user end side). Two SOAs with different gain recovery times were used at different bit rates. Results show that if the SOA is placed at the ONU, fast SOAs are the most efficient for noise reduction. On the contrary, if the SOA is at the OLT, slow SOAs represent a better solution for noise cleaning, since they introduce less performance penalty.