Bidirectional Transmission Using Tunable Fiber Lasers and Injection-Locked Fabry–PÉrot Laser Diodes for WDM Access Networks

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate the use of fiber ring lasers and Fabry-Perot laser diodes (FP-LDs) for wavelength-division-multiplexing access networks. The fiber ring laser not only generates downstream data traffic but also serves as the wavelength-selecting injection light source for the FP-LD located at the subscriber site. Moreover, it is wavelength tunable and can be applied to dynamic wavelength assignment networks. The ring laser has a tunable range of 30 nm in the C-band and a power fluctuation smaller than 0.6 dB. For 10-Gb/s downstream and 1.25-Gb/s upstream transmissions over 10-km single-mode fiber, power penalties less than 0.9 and 0.5 dB are demonstrated, respectively. A 40-dB sidemode suppression ratio is obtained for the FP-LD injection-locking at 1544.8 nm.