Demonstration and performance investigation of hybrid OFDM systems for optical access network applications

We propose a hybrid solution to exploit the capabilities of the optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) for passive optical network applications implemented by the electronic generation of the OFDM signal at the transmitter and by the all-optical demultiplexing of the OFDM subcarriers at the remote node by means of a passive element, such as suitable arrayed waveguide grating, performing the fast Fourier transform (FFT) in the optical domain. Drastic simplicity at the optical network unit is achieved with neither coherent detection nor any high-speed electronics, allowing an effective exploitation of all the available transmission spectra. By means of simulations and preliminary experimentation, we demonstrate 4 x 10-Gb/s transmission over more than 40-km standard single-mode fiber, the main limitation to the number of subcarriers being the employed device's actual electronic bandwidth.