Using single side-band modulation for colorless OFDM-WDM access network to alleviate Rayleigh backscattering effects

In this investigation, we demonstrate a new colorless orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing (OFDM) wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON) system with Rayleigh backscattering (RB) noise mitigation. Here, only a single laser source at the central office (CO) is needed to produce the downstream signal and distributed continuous-wave (CW) carrier, which will then be modulated at the optical networking unit (ONU) to produce the upstream signal. Single side-band (SSB) modulation is used to wavelength-shift the distributed CW carrier, which will be launched into a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA) based ONU for directly modulation of 5.15 Gbps OFDM upstream signal. To avoid the radio-frequency (RF) power fading and chromatic fiber dispersion, the four-band OFDM modulation is proposed to generate a 40 Gbps downstream when a Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) with -0.7 chirp parameter is used. Hence, the RB circumvention can be centralized in the CO. Moreover, the signal performances of downstream and upstream are also studied and discussed in this measurement.