IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO.
1, JANUARY 1, 2015
Full-Duplex RSOA-Based PONs Using
4-PAM With Pre-Equalization
Christos Stamatiadis, Ryosuke Matsumoto, Yuki Yoshida, Akira Agata, Akihiro Maruta, and Ken-Ichi Kitayama
Abstract— We investigate the use of 4-pulsed amplitude
modulation (PAM) in reflective semiconductor optical ampli-
fier (RSOA)-based PON implementations. The performance of
low-bandwidth RSOAs can be significantly upgraded using
4-PAM together with pre-equalization. We demonstrate
4-PAM external modulation up to 8 Gb/s using a RSOA
with a 3-dB bandwidth of 1.2-GHz and 10-km 4-PAM
transmission at 8 Gb/s with bit-error-rate below the
forward-error-correction (FEC) limit. In the full-duplex
4-PAM transmission, 10-km symmetric performance up to 4 Gb/s
is experimentally demonstrated using a downstream signal with
strong DC offset for data cancelation and upstream remodulation.
Index Terms— Pulsed amplitude modulation (PAM), reflective
semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA), fiber to the
home (FTTH), optical access networks, passive optical
network (PON), wavelength reuse.
I. I NTRODUCTION
N EXT generation access topologies have to provide
advanced and customer-oriented network solutions deliv-
ering higher data rates and better quality of services through
cost-efficient fiber distribution networks [1]. This presupposes
the deployment of low-cost optical devices in the passive
optical network (PON) and the use of intensity modulation
direct detection (IM-DD) techniques. Low-cost optical devices
however, exhibit certain bandwidth limitations that keep sig-
naling rates very slow. For example reflective semiconductor
optical amplifiers (RSOAs) exhibit a maximum bandwidth of
2.5GHz that prohibits faster direct modulation speeds and thus
higher upstream transmission rates [2]. In this context, the use
of advanced modulation formats compatible with IM/DD is an
attractive way to achieve high spectral efficiency and faster bit
rates without resorting to costly coherent detection approaches.
So far, three technologies have been proposed for leveraging
the performance of short-distance optical links. The first con-
siders an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
scheme denoted as discrete multi-tone modulation (DMT) [3].
With DMT, data is loaded in the intensity domain and
Manuscript received August 27, 2014; revised September 22, 2014; accepted
October 3, 2014. Date of publication October 8, 2014; date of current version
December 8, 2014. This work was supported by the MAPNET Erasmus
Mundus Master Program.
C. Stamatiadis is with the Joint Laboratory Silicon Photonics
HFT4, Technische Universitaet Berlin, Berlin 10587, Germany (e-mail:
christos.stamatiadis@tu-berlin.de).
R. Matsumoto, Y. Yoshida, A. Maruta, and K.-I Kitayama are with the
Department of Electrical, Electronics and Information Engineering, Graduate
School of Engineering, Osaka University, Suita 565-0871, Japan (e-mail:
matsumoto@pn.comm.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp; yuki@comm.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp;
maruta@comm.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp; kitayama@comm.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp).
A. Agata is with KDDI Research and Development Laboratories Inc.,
Fujimino 356-8502, Japan (e-mail: agata@kddilabs.jp).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2014.2361922
1041-1135 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
73
transmission is adapted to channel conditions individually for
each sub-carrier. The second method concerns multiband car-
rierless amplitude and phase modulation (MultiCAP) employ-
ing filters with orthogonal waveforms for separating the
data streams [4]. Both DMT and MultiCAP have already
demonstrated channel capacities up to 100Gb/s but at the
expense of high system complexity and cost. An alterna-
tive option considers the use of multi-level pulsed ampli-
tude modulation (M-PAM). 4-PAM offers a simple and
cost-efficient way to upgrade the performance of already
existing optical links without increasing the level of com-
plexity and processing in the transmitter or the receiver
side [5]. 4-PAM can be directly applied to passive optical
networks (PONs). For example, in reflective semiconductor
optical amplifier (RSOA)-based PONs, several experimen-
tal works have been reported considering amplitude shift
keying (ASK) in the downlink and 4-PAM in the
uplink [6], [7]. Recently, a full-duplex 4-PAM transmission
experiment has been demonstrated using optical filtering tech-
niques for downstream (DS) cancellation and upstream (US)
re-modulation [8]. In this scheme however, the power loss after
carrier extraction was remarkable necessitating the use of addi-
tional amplifications elements raising both power consumption
and cost. In addition, a dual-feeder fiber link was employed
for eliminating Rayleigh back-scattering and uplink baud rate
was limited to 1Gbaud due to the bandwidth limitations of
the SOA. A faster as well as power and cost-efficient solution
would require the use of a single-feeder fiber link and the
deployment of a single RSOA modulated with pre-equalized
4-PAM. It has been shown that the performance of a 2.2GHz
RSOA can be upgraded up to 11Gbit/s using 4-PAM and
post-equalization but considering only an uplink scenario [9].
So far, RSOA-based PONs using 4-PAM with pre-equalization
in full-duplex transmission have not yet been reported.
Following this rationale, we report in this letter the
performance of RSOA-based PONs with 4-PAM. We demon-
strate that RSOAs with a 3-dB bandwidth of 1.2GHz can
reach a maximum speed of 8Gb/s by applying 4-PAM and
pre-equalization. We show that after 10km transmission the
performance of RSOA can scale up to 8Gb/s with bit-error-
rate below the FEC (255,223) limit. Then we demonstrate
full-duplex 4-PAM bidirectional transmission up to 4Gb/s
employing a downstream signal with strong DC offset for data
cancellation and upstream re-modulation.
II. P ERFORMANCE U PGRADE OF L OW-BANDWIDTH
RSOAs U SING 4-PAM AND P RE -E QUALIZATION
In our experiment a packaged and pigtailed RSOA has
been employed. The device when biased up to 80mA exhibits
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Fig. 1. a) Electro-optical response of RSOA. 4-PAM external modulation of
RSOA at b, c) 1Gbaud, d, e) 2 Gbaud and f, g) 4 Gbaud without and with
pre-equalization respectively.
a maximum gain at 1555nm. The small signal gain of the
RSOA is measured around 18dB at 1555nm while deep
saturation is observed at power levels higher than 0dBm. The
10-90% gain recovery time of the RSOA is measured around
180ps while its 3-dB electrical bandwidth is not exceeding the
value of 1.2GHz. Fig. 1a) depicts the electro-optical frequency
response of the RSOA. For the 4-PAM external modulation
up to 4Gbaud, a continuous wave (CW) signal emitted by a
distributed feedback laser is launched through a circulator into
the RSOA with a power of −7dBm at 1555nm. The RSOA is
externally driven through a bias-T by an arbitrary waveform
generator (AWG) loaded with a 215 − 1 PRBS naturally
encoded 4-PAM sequence. For symbol rates at 1Gbaud and
2Gbaud, the sample rate of AWG is 10GSa/s, while for
4Gbaud 12GSa/s. The modulated signal after amplification
is detected by a 12.5GHz photo-receiver and then sampled
by a real-time oscilloscope at 20GS/s. The rate conversion,
matched filtering and the PAM demodulation are implemented
in an offline manner in a workstation. No post-equalization or
additional post-processing technique is applied for bit-error-
rate measurements. In order to generate the 4-PAM sequence
from the AWG, two approaches have been followed. First
the RSOA is externally driven with 4-PAM without using
any pre-equalization. In the second case, a digital filter is
adapted for pre-equalization in a feed-back manner based on
the normalized least mean-square (LMS) algorithm [10].
Fig. 1 depicts the RSOA performance with 4-PAM external
modulation without and with the pre-equalization. At 1Gbaud
IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO. 1, JANUARY 1, 2015
Fig. 2. i) BER of RSOA performance with 4-PAM at various symbol
rates without and with pre-equalization. ii) Periodogram without and with
pre-equalization at 4Gbaud.
the eye diagrams reveal similar characteristics as illustrated in
Fig. 1b), and c). At 2 Gbaud the performance improvement
with pre-equalization is evident observing a clear eye-opening
between the four amplitude levels as shown in Fig. 1e).
At baud rates up to 4Gbaud and without pre-equalization
the 4-PAM signal is completely distorted. However, the
pre-equalization case turns to be still effective with an eye-
diagram still appearing although very noisy as illustrated in
Fig. 1g). In this context, 4-PAM modulation assisted with pre-
equalization can considerably upgrade the performance of the
low-bandwidth RSOA devices for potential use in higher bit
rate US transmission links. In our experiment we employed the
digital pre-equalization using a high performance digital-to-
analog (D/A) converter. The equalizer taps exhibit a relatively
simple high-pass characteristic that is feasible to implement
in the analog RF domain. This allows the integration of
a passive equalizer in the RF path of the RSOA, enhanc-
ing its performance, keeping low complexity at the optical
network unit (ONU) and avoiding electronic equalization at
the optical line terminal (OLT) receiver. In order to validate
the use of 4-PAM for uplink transmission, a 10km standard
single mode fiber (SMF) was inserted after RSOA. Fig. 2i)
depicts the 4-PAM bit-error-rate (BER) performance without
pre-equalization, with pre-equalization and after 10km SMF
transmission at different baud rates. Without pre-equalization
at 2Gbaud, the RSOA performance exhibits an error floor at a
BER level slightly below 10−3 . With pre-equalization however,
STAMATIADIS et al.: FULL-DUPLEX RSOA-BASED PONs
Fig. 3. a) Experimental setup. Eye diagram at 2Gb/s of b) downstream signal after saturated RSOA, c) upstream signal after downstream re-modulation.
Eye diagrams at 2Gbit/s of downstream signal with strong DC offset d, e, f), after saturated RSOA g,h,i), and upstream signal j, k, l), at 2V, 2.1V and 2.2V
LN modulator bias voltage respectively, m) Bit-error-rate performance of downstream and upstream signal at 2Gb/s after 10km bidirectional transmission.
BER performance can be upgraded up to 4Gbaud with an
error-floor below 10−5 . Fig. 2ii) shows the power spectral
density with and without pre-equalization at 4Gbaud.
III. F ULL -D UPLEX 4-PAM T RANSMISSION W ITHOUT
U PSTREAM P RE -E QUALIZATION
Fig. 3a) depicts the experimental setup for the bidirectional
4-PAM transmission performance. A continuous wave (CW)
signal emitted by a distributed feedback laser (DFB) at
1555nm is launched with a power of 10dBm into a LiNbO3
modulator. The modulator is externally driven by an AWG,
loaded with a 215−1 PRBS naturally encoded 4-PAM sequence
at 1Gbaud. A bias T is incorporated to adjust the DC bias
voltage. The 4-PAM optical signal after amplification is
launched with a power of 11dBm into the fiber distribution
network. The network is composed by a single feeder fiber link
with length of 9.2km of standard single mode fiber (SSMF)
and a short drop fiber of 800m. The loss budget between
the OLT and the ONU is set at 15dB by adjusting the
attenuator A1. A 3dB coupler divides the DS signal in two
branches; one for direct detection and the other for US
re-modulation using a RSOA. The DS signal is detected by
a 12.5GHz photo-receiver and then sampled by a real-time
oscilloscope at 20GS/s. The input power into the receiver is
−7dBm and is varied by a second attenuator A2. The rate
conversion, matched filtering and the PAM demodulation are
implemented in an offline manner in a workstation. No post-
equalization or additional post-processing technique is applied
for bit-error-rate measurements. At the ONU the RSOA is
biased up to 80mA and is externally driven by an arbitrary
waveform generator using a bias-T for current injection plus
4-PAM modulation at 1Gbaud. Input power into the RSOA is
−7dBm. At the OLT side, the US reception and demodulation
is implemented in the same way as with the DS signal.
75
In WDM-PON system architectures, the RSOA is
commonly used for DS cancellation, amplification and
re-modulation back to the OLT by operating the RSOA in the
saturation regime. In this work we tried to apply the same
technique by reusing a 4-PAM DS signal for US
re-modulation. Fig. 3b) depicts the not complete 4-PAM
DS cancellation after the RSOA resulting in a waveform with
patterning effects and poor quality for re-modulation. Fig. 3c)
illustrates the US 4-PAM signal interfering with the not
completely erased DS signal thus resulting in a waveform that
cannot be transmitted back to the OLT. To address this issue,
we have reduced the driving voltage of the LiNbO3 (LN)
modulator thus increasing the DC offset of the DS signal.
In this sense, the induced DC bias depleted the RSOA gain
eliminating effectively the 4-PAM patterning effects after data
cancellation. To control further the DS DC component, the
DC bias injected into the LiNbO3 modulator was adjusted.
During the experiment the driving voltage of the AWG for
DS and US modulation was set to <0.1Vpp and 0.6Vpp
respectively. Fig. 3d), e), and f) illustrate the eye-diagrams
of DS signal at 2V, 2.1V and 2.2V of bias voltage applied
into the LiNbO3 modulator. In turns, Fig. 3g), h), i) and
Fig. 3j), k), l) represent the effective DS cancellation and the
US re-modulation respectively at the aforementioned
LN modulator bias voltages. It becomes evident that by
increasing the bias voltage to 2.1V and subsequently to
2.2V the eye-opening of DS signal is decreased but data
erase and US quality are improved. Fig. 1m) shows the
bit-error-rate of both DS and US at 2Gbit/s. At 2V LiNbO3
modulator (MOD) bias voltage, symmetric bidirectional BER
performance just below the FEC-RS (255, 223) limit (BER
at 1 × 10−3 ) is achieved at −10dBm received power for both
DS and US. On the other hand at 2.2V MOD bias voltage,
the DS performance is deteriorated with BER below the FEC
limit at −9dBm, while US performance is improved with
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Fig. 4. Eye diagrams at 4Gbit/s of downstream signal a, b, c) and upstream signal d, e, f) at 2V, 2.1V and 2.2V of LN modulator DC bias voltage respectively.
g) Bit-error-rate performance of downstream and upstream signal at 4Gb/s after 10km bidirectional transmission.
BER below the FEC limit at a received power lower than
−11dBm. While increasing the MOD bias from 2V to 2.2V,
the DS exhibits a power penalty of 0.8dB at a BER level of
1 × 10−3 . On the other hand, the power penalty of US signal
from 2.2V to 2V MOD bias is 1.3dB at the FEC limit. This
means that by modifying the MOD bias at the OLT, there is
a trade-off between the reception penalties of both DS and
US signals.
IV. F ULL -D UPLEX 4-PAM T RANSMISSION W ITH
U PSTREAM P RE -E QUALIZATION
Bidirectional 4-PAM transmission at symbol rates higher
than 1Gbaud could not be accomplished due to the RSOA
bandwidth limitations. To overcome this bottleneck, a digital
filter acting as pre-equalizer was applied in the transmission
link speeding-up the RSOA to the performance metrics shown
in Section II. Following this approach, the baud rate of the sys-
tem was increased up to 2Gbaud (4Gbit/s). Data cancellation
was implemented using a DS signal with strong DC offset as
described in Section III. Since pre-equalized signal waveforms
exhibit smaller modulation depth compared to the case of not
equalized data streams, the voltage applied to the AWG for
US modulation was increased up to 1Vpp. This was required
for improving signal-to-noise ratio as well as overcoming
transmission link effects such as Rayleigh back-scattering.
Fig. 4a, b, and c) depict the eye diagrams of the DS signal
at 4Gbit/s inducing 2V, 2.1V and 2.2V bias voltage into the
LN modulator respectively. In turns, Fig. 4d, e, and f) illustrate
the eye diagrams of the US signal at the aforementioned bias
voltages. Finally, Fig. 4g) shows the bit-error-rate of both
DS and US at 4Gbit/s with the LN modulator bias voltage
adjusted from 2V to 2.1V. Symmetric 10km bidirectional
BER performance below the FEC (255,223) limit is achieved
at 2.1V bias voltage with received power higher than −7dBm.
Considering the Turbo-FEC case (BER at 1.98 × 10−2 ), full-
duplex transmission below the Turbo-FEC limit could be
achieved at received powers below −10dBm at 2V MOD bias
voltage. While increasing the MOD bias from 2V to 2.1V,
the DS exhibits a power penalty of 2.4dB at a BER level of
1 × 10−3 . In our experiment we have used a linear amplifier
at the ONU with a gain of 15dB. Due to the limited output
voltage of the AWG (<1Vpp) and taking into account the
IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO. 1, JANUARY 1, 2015
losses from the cabling connections and bias-T, we believe
that a slight higher driving voltage at the RSOA could have
further improved US 4-PAM transmission performance.
V. C ONCLUSION
We have upgraded the performance of low-cost and low-
bandwidth RSOAs up to 8Gbit/s using 4-PAM together with
pre-equalization. We have demonstrated full-duplex 4-PAM
transmission up to 4Gbit/s using a simple, cost-effective
and power-efficient RSOA-based PON. The proposed scheme
ensures a practical solution for high-speed and low-cost optical
links in next generation access networks.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the MAPNET
Erasmus Mundus Master Program for a visiting fellowship
to Osaka University.
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