Impairments Due to Burst-Mode Transmission in a Raman-Based Long-Reach PON Link

A recently proposed passive-optical-network (PON) link based on distributed Raman amplification is tested with disturbing burst-mode traffic. The resulting impairments are quantified through penalty measurements on a single surviving data channel as a function of the disturbing channel power. When the disturbing channels co- or counter propagate with the data channel, penalties of less than 1 dB are found for disturbing input powers up to 7 and 11 dBm, respectively. The penalty is further reduced when a moderate amount of continuous-wave light is used to clamp the gain. The results indicate that the highly linear PON link is a promising candidate for long-reach feeder links in future, high-capacity PON systems with burst-mode traffic.