A VCSEL-Composed Tunable Optical Band-Pass Filter for Long-Reach Optical Single Sideband Transport Systems

This paper proposes a novel long-reach optical single sideband (OSSB) transport system based on a phase modulator and a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL)-composed tunable optical band-pass filter (TOBPF). Experimental results show that the VCSEL-composed TOBPF can provide an approximately 5 GHz pass-band window, 350 GHz detuning frequency, and more than 13 dB stop-band attenuation to convert an optical phase-modulated radio frequency signal from optical double sideband (ODSB) format to OSSB format. Error-free transmissions and clear eye diagrams are experimentally obtained when a 1.25 Gbps/10 GHz RF signal is transmitted over a 60 km single mode fiber. The proposed system is shown to be efficient in promoting radio-over-fiber (RoF) transmission in long-distance passive optical networks.