WDM-PON system based on the laser light injected reflective semiconductor optical amplifier

Abstract This paper proposes a WDM-PON system which uses the laser light injected reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (R-SOA) as the optical transmitter. In the system, optical carrier of laser lights is supplied from the central office (CO) to the R-SOA both in CO and in the subscriber's side. The optical carrier consists of a pair of the perpendicularly polarized laser lights to avoid the polarization dependence of R-SOA. The optical carrier can be shared by several WDM-PON systems to save the cost. We measured the transmission performance of R-SOA which modulates the polarization mixed injection laser at 1.25 Gbps. It is shown that the combined effect of Rayleigh backscattering and the intensity noise induced by the feedback of optical signals into the R-SOA increases the required level of optical injection power into the R-SOA.