Impact of seed source power on dispersion-limited maximum reach in WDM-PONs using broadband light source seeded optical sources

The maximum reach in a WDM-PON using a broadband light source (BLS) seeded optical source has been experimentally evaluated by taking into account both effects of dispersion-induced pulse broadening and excess intensity noise (EIN) increase. In order to investigate the impact of BLS seed source power on the dispersion-limited performance, the system's performance has been measured and compared as a function of the spectrum-sliced BLS seed power into a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA). From the results, we confirmed that the maximum reach in a RSOA based WDM-PON was mainly degraded by the dispersion-induced EIN increase. Therefore, by mitigating the effect of dispersion-induced EIN increase with a high seed power into a RSOA, the maximum reach in the WDM-PON using a BLS seeded RSOA source could be achieved to be similar to 60 km of single-mode fiber at the spectrum-sliced BLS seed power of >-10 dBm and a 1.25 Gb/s signal without using any dispersion-compensating techniques. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America