A spectrally sliced PON employing Fabry-Perot lasers

We investigate using Fabry-Perot lasers as the upstream transmitters in a wavelength-division-multiplexed passive optical network (WDM-PON). We demonstrate transmission of a 10-Mb/s signal through each port of a wavelength-grating router followed by 18 km of fiber using an uncooled Fabry-Perot laser. These signals could be subcarrier multiplexed together, so that each user would have a dedicated radio-frequency channel. Since Fabry-Perot lasers provide more output power than low-cost light-emitting diodes, this may enable deployment of WDM-PON´s in areas where optical loss prohibits the use of other low cost optical sources. The bit-rate is limited by mode-fluctuations being converted into intensity noise when transmitted through the router.