Rayleigh Noise Suppression with Cascaded RSOAs
in WDM-PON System
Hanlin Feng, Shilin Xiao*, Lilin Yi, Zhao Zhou, Tao Qi, Weisheng Hu
The State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China
*
Abstract—In single fiber bidirectional central light seeding
wavelength division multiplexing passive optical network (CLS
WDM-PON), Rayleigh backscattering (RB) noise is the main
factor limiting system performance. We propose and
demonstrate a cascaded reflective semiconductor optical
amplifiers (RSOAs) structure to suppress signal RB noise in
WDM-PON. Experimental results demonstrate that upstream
and downstream receiver sensitivity can be improved, with better
signal RB noise tolerance in both upstream and downstream
directions.
Keywords—Rayleigh backscattering; wavelength
multilplexing; reflective semiconductor optical amplifier;
I. INTRODUCTION
The wavelength-division multiplexing passive optical
network (WDM-PON) is one of the most promising
candidates for the next generation optical access network. It
can provide intensive bandwidth and reliable point-to-point
(PtP) connection. Now the capital expenditure (CAPEX) and
operational expenditure (OPEX) are still the main obstacles to
practically deploy the WDM-PON system [1]. Some cost-
effective colorless optical network unit (ONU) schemes in
central light seeding PON (CLS-PON) have been proposed to
overcome these problems, such as using injection locking
reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA) and Fabry-
Perot laser diode (FP-LD) [2-4]. In these schemes, cost
effective RSOA and FP-LD have been used as modulators and
signal erasers in ONU. Those schemes have two main
shortcomings. One is the constraint of downstream extinction
ratio (ER) value [5]. With high downstream ER value, the data
erasing effect of ONU is poor and upstream bit error rate
(BER) performance will be degraded by the residual
downstream signal. Now phase modulated signal is used to
eliminate the ER constraint, but high cost delay interferometer
(DI) must be deployed in ONU to demodulate differential
phase shift keying (DPSK) signal [6]. The other shortcoming
is the severe Rayleigh backscattering (RB) noise in CLS-PON
with single fiber bidirectional transmission. The RB noise may
seriously influence the upstream performance. This noise is
divided into carrier RB noise and signal RB noise. Carrier RB
noise can be mitigated by dual feeder fiber deployed in optical
line terminal (OLT) [7]. In other schemes, DI is deployed in
OLT to suppress the carrier RB noise [8, 9]. The high pass
filter and nonlinear semiconductor optical amplifier (NL-SOA)
are also used to suppress signal RB noise [10]. Through the
four wavelength mixing (FWM) effect generated by SOA,
____________________________________
978-1-4673-5699-2 /13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
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slxiao@sjtu.edu.cn
individual upstream carrier signal can be generated to
completely eliminate the two kinds of RB noise [11]. However,
ring topology network structure is needed in such scheme.
While the tolerance to the signal RB noise and carrier RB
noise can be both improved through using single side band
modulation generated by dual parallel Mach-Zehnder
modulator (DP-MZM) [12]. Whereas the modulation speed of
DP-MZM is constrained limiting the effective utilization of
the high bandwidth character of DP-MZM.
division In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a colorless
ONU structure based on cascaded RSOAs, used in single fiber
bidirectional transmission CLS WDM-PON system. Through
the two cascaded RSOAs, the gain saturation effect of
colorless ONU is enhanced. With the cascaded RSOAs
structure, the signal RB noise can be effectively suppressed by
the first stage RSOA before re-entering the second stage
RSOA. And the downstream signal could maintain high ER
value. Meanwhile the residual downstream signal in upstream
direction can be decreased to a certain level. It is worth noting
that several schemes have been proposed to mitigate the signal
RB noise, such as those utilizing gain saturated semiconductor
optical amplifier (GS-SOA) and reflective electro-absorption
modulator-semiconductor optical amplifier (R-EAM-SOA)
[13, 14]. Unlike in those schemes, we merely need two cost-
effective RSOAs and two optical circulators in ONU to
suppress signal RB noise and eliminate constraint of
downstream ER value due to the improved gain saturation
effect, while preserving the colorless characteristic of ONU
and OPEX in field deployment. In experiment, we measure the
BER performance of 10 Gb/s downstream direction and 1.25
Gb/s upstream direction in 30 km SMF bidirectional
transmission.
II. PRINCIPLE AND SYETEMATIC ARCHITECTURE
The CLS WDM-PON which utilized cascaded RSOAs
structure is shown in Fig.1. In the sending and receiving
module of OLT, the downstream non-return-to-zero (NRZ)
signal is modulated on optical wavelength ON through Mach-
Zehnder modulator (MZM). An optical circulator is used to
separate upstream and downstream signal. Downstream
wavelengths are multiplexed by arrayed waveguide grating
(AWG) and then sent to remote node (RN) through a 25 km
SMF. The AWG deployed in RN de-multiplexes
corresponding wavelength to the specific ONU through a 5 km
length drop fiber. In experiment, we compare the upstream
and downstream transmission performance of the cascaded

 Fig.1 CLS WDM-PON Architecture
Fig.1 CLS WDM-PON Architecture
RSOAs structure with that of the single stage RSOA structure.
The cascaded RSOAs structure is depicted in ONU 1 and
single stage RSOA structure is shown in ONU N of Fig.1. We
use an optical coupler (50:50) in ONU 1 to separate the
downstream received signal and upstream re-modulated signal.
The cascaded structure has two RSOAs, a three ports optical
circulator and a four ports optical circulator. Signal
transmission direction is drop fiber – RSOA1 – RSOA2 – drop
fiber. Upstream data is modulated by the second stage RSOA.
(a)
(b)
Fig.2 Comparisons between Two Structures,
(a) Gain Saturation Curve; (b) Electrical Spectrum.
In single fiber bidirectional transmission CLS WDM-PON
system, RB noise can be classified into carrier RB noise and
signal RB noise. Carrier RB noise is generated by carrier signal

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of various wavelengths and many schemes have been designed
to eliminate such noise. The second one is the signal RB noise
reflected to ONU and re-modulated by RSOA. Owing to twice
modulation by RSOA, the signal RB noise has wider optical
spectrum than upstream signal. In single stage RSOA structure,
upstream re-modulated signal is directly reflected back to
RSOA and re-modulated once again by this device. Therefore,
upstream receiver sensitivity is seriously degraded by signal
RB noise. In the cascaded RSOA structure, the upstream signal
reflected back is suppressed by the high saturation of the first
stage RSOA, and then re-modulated by the second stage RSOA,
so the upstream interference noise produced by signal RB noise
can be suppressed. Fig.2 (a) depicts the gain saturation effect of
single stage RSOA and cascaded RSOA. The gain saturation
curve of cascaded RSOA is smoother than that of single stage
RSOA. Therefore, the erasing effects for the downstream data
and signal RB noise reflected back are both enhanced. Fig.2 (b)
shows the frequency response curves of both structures. Due to
the better gain saturation effect, cascaded RSOA structure has
lower low frequency response curve than single stage RSOA
structure, and RB noise in low frequency range is effectively
suppressed.
III. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND RESULTS
Fig.3. Experimental Setup
We design an experiment to validate the performance of
data erasing and signal RB noise suppression by cascaded
RSOAs. Meanwhile, a single stage RSOA structure is
designed for comparison. In Fig.3, 1551.75 nm continuous This value is 4 dB higher than the RS under 5.3 dB ER value.
wave (CW) light is generated by tunable laser source (TLS), In the signal eye diagram, clear eye diagram can be obtained
with power of 14 dBm. Through MZM (insertion loss 4 dB) under high ER value. When the signal RB noise reflected is
and 25 km SMF, signal light is de-multiplexed by a AWG increased to -28 dBm, the reflection noise exerts great
(insertion loss 4 dB) which has 0.8 nm channel spacing. Then influence on low ER signal. When downstream ER value is set
the signal light is sent to the re-modulation unit in ONU. The at 5.3 dB, the RS under -28 dBm reflection power is 6 dB
insertion losses of both optical circulators are 0.5 dB. The lower than the RS under -40 dBm reflection power. This is
power of signal light which injected to re-modulation unit is due to the severe optical beating interference (OBI) noise
fixed at -6 dBm. MZM is driven by 10 Gb/s 231-1 pseudo generated by the high power reflection signal and downstream
random binary sequence (PRBS) data sequence. The RSOA signal. While with high ER downstream signal, the difference
used in our experiment is CIP SOA-R-OEC-1550-CO which is between RS under high reflection power and RS under low
driven by bias circuit and 1.25 Gb/s 231-1 PRBS signal is reflection power is only 1.5 dB. This has demonstrate that
modulated on this circuit. In Fig.3 we set a reflection point suppression of reflection noise and better tolerance of signal
near OLT to generate signal RB noise intentionally. The RB noise can be achieved through maintaining high ER value
reflection point has a high reflection mirror to reflect upstream in downstream direction.
signal to downstream direction and a VOA to control the
reflection signal power. Polarization controller (PC) is used to
ensure the highest beating noise effect on receiving signal. We
use pre-amplified photo diode (PD) to receive upstream and
downstream data.
We experimentally analyze the data erasing performance
of the cascaded RSOA structure. The downstream signal
format is 10 Gb/s NRZ with 11.36 dB ER value as shown in
Fig.4 (e). The seeding power injected into re-modulating unit
is set at -6 dBm and -12 dBm respectively. For single stage
RSOA, high seeding power will induce better gain saturation
effect, so the data erasing effect of -6 dBm seeding power is
better than the erasing effect of -12 dBm seeding power. The
intensity of residual downstream data is suppressed
significantly, as depicted in Fig.4 (a) and (b). So in single
stage RSOA configuration, the upstream re-modulated signal
performance is limited by the downstream seeding power and
this also reduces the power budget of the whole system. The Fig.5 Downstream BER Performance
cascaded RSOAs structure has much better data erasing
performance than the single stage RSOA structure under the
same seeding power. In Fig.4 (d), the downstream data is
completely erased by cascaded RSOA structure while seeding
power is -12 dBm.

Fig.4 Data Erasing Performance

In order to analyze the signal RB noise tolerance of the
system, we intentionally increase the noise reflected back to
Fig.6 Upstream BER Performance
ONU through the reflection point in Fig.3. The downstream
Fig.6 depicts the upstream BER performance with two
BER performance under different ER value and reflection
different re-modulation structures. When low ER downstream
power is depicted in Fig.5. When the ER value of downstream
signal is used (ER = 3.3 dB), the BER performance of single
signal is 11 dB with low reflection power (-40 dBm), the
stage RSOA structure can meet 10-9 and the receiver
receiver sensitivity (RS) in downstream direction is -29 dBm.



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sensitivity is -27.5 dBm. After ER value is increased to 5.3 dB,
the BER performance cannot reach 10-9. This is due to the
serious residual downstream signal produced by the limited
gain saturation effect of single stage RSOA. The eye diagram
in Fig.6 has lots of residual signal in the upside part and this
influences the RS in upstream direction. We can achieve a
better data erasing performance from the cascaded RSOAs
structure, and downstream signals of 5.3 dB ER value and 11
dB ER can both be completely erased by this structure. The
clear eye diagrams are given with nearly no residual
downstream signal and the RS is about -31 dBm under 5.3 dB
downstream ER value. When this ER value is increased to 11
dB, there is only 0.5 dB power penalty. Therefore, better RS
performance in upstream direction is achieved in CLS WDM-
PON, due to the suppression of signal RB noise by using
cascaded RSOAs structure.
IV. CONCLUSION
We design a cascaded RSOAs structure with better gain
saturation effect. By utilizing this structure, downstream ER
limitation can be eliminated and upstream signal RB noise can
be suppressed efficiently. The BER performance shows that
both downstream and upstream RS have been improved.
Acknowledgment
The work was jointly supported by the National Nature
Science Fund of China (No. 61271216, No. 61221001, No.
61090393 and No. 60972032), the National “973” Project of
China (No.2010CB328205, No. 2010CB328204 and No.
2012CB315602) and the National “863” Hi-tech Project of
China.
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