Performance analysis of long band passive optical network using amplifier spontaneous noise and fiber Bragg gratings

Abstract Long band (L-Band) passive optical networks (PONs) are attracting a lot of attention these days, thanks to rising capacity demands. Because of PONs requesting more and more channels, fault detection/monitoring is critical. Fault detection in the conventional band (C-Band) employing reflecting Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBGs) and a probe signal integrating an additional amplified spontaneous noise (ASEN) source has been frequently demonstrated. However, interference occurs when ASEN and transmitter signals are in the same wavelength band, and adding additional ASEN sources to the network raises the overall cost. So, in L-Band PONs, a cost-effective, low-complexity fault detection/monitoring system is required. Therefore, in this work, a fault detection/monitoring system for L-Band PON using C-Band ASEN from inline erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and dual purpose FBG, i.e. (1) ASEN reflection for fault monitoring and (2) dispersion compensation is proposed. A 4 × 10 Gbps L-Band PON is investigated over 40 km feeder fiber (FF) and 1 km drop fibers (DFs) that serve 32 optical network units (ONUs)/different input powers, dispersion values, and laser linewidths in terms of reflective power of FBGs, eye opening factor, and bit error rate (BER), respectively.