Heterogeneous radio-over-fiber passive access network architecture to mitigate Rayleigh backscattering interferometric beat noise

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a hybrid radio-over-fiber (ROF) wavelength division multiplexed and time division multiplexed passive optical network (WDM-TDM PON) architecture to mitigate Rayleigh backscattering (RB) interferometric beat noises. Here, only a single wavelength is needed at the central office (CO) to generate the downstream baseband data for optical wired application and optical millimeter-wave (mm-wave) signal for wireless application. The upstream signal is produced by remodulating the downstream signal. No optical filter is required at the optical network unit/remote antenna unit (ONU/RAU) to separate the optical wired and optical mm-wave signals. In the proposed network, 10 Gb/s differential phase shift keying (DPSK) signal is used for the downstream optical wired application and 2.5 Gb/s on-off keying (OOK) signal on 20 GHz carrier is used for the optical mm-wave signal. In each ONU, a reflective optical semiconductor amplifier (RSOA) is used to remodulate and produce a 2.5 Gb/s OOK format for upstream traffic. As the back-refection produced by the downstream DPSK signal and the upstream OOK signal is traveling in different fiber path, RB noise at the CO can be completely mitigated.