Self-Seeded RSOA-Fiber Cavity Lasers vs. ASE Spectrum-Sliced or Externally Seeded Transmitters—A Comparative Study

• DOI: 10.3390/app5041922
• Publication Date: 2015-12-17T15:47:37Z
• Authors: Simon Gebrewold; Romain Bonjour; Sophie Barbet; Anaelle Maho; Romain Brenot; Philippe Chanclou; Marco Brunero; Lucia Marazzi; Paola Parolari; Angelina Totovic; Dejan Gvozdic; David Hillerkuss; Christian Hafner; Juerg Leuthold
• Keywords: Technology; externally seeded RSOA; reflective semiconductor optical amplifier; QH301-705.5; T; Physics; QC1-999; 02 engineering and technology; Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General); colorless WDM-PON; Chemistry; 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; Reflective semiconductor optical amplifier; ASE spectrum sliced; self-seeded RSOA fiber cavity laser; externally seeded RSOA; colorless WDM-PON; TA1-2040; Biology (General); Reflective semiconductor optical amplifier; QD1-999; self-seeded RSOA fiber cavity laser; ASE spectrum sliced

Reflective semiconductor optical amplifier fiber cavity lasers (RSOA-FCLs) are appealing, colorless, self-seeded, self-tuning and cost-efficient upstream transmitters. They are of interest for wavelength division multiplexed passive optical networks (WDM-PONs) based links. In this paper, we compare RSOA-FCLs with alternative colorless sources, namely the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) spectrum-sliced and the externally seeded RSOAs. We compare the differences in output power, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), relative intensity noise (RIN), frequency response and transmission characteristics of these three sources. It is shown that an RSOA-FCL offers a higher output power over an ASE spectrum-sliced source with SNR, RIN and frequency response characteristics halfway between an ASE spectrum-sliced and a more expensive externally seeded RSOA. The results show that the RSOA-FCL is a cost-efficient WDM-PON upstream source, borrowing simplicity and cost-efficiency from ASE spectrum slicing with characteristics that are, in many instances, good enough to perform short-haul transmission. To substantiate our statement and to quantitatively compare the potential of the three schemes, we perform data transmission experiments at 5 and 10 Gbit/s.