Demonstration of Bit-Level CWDM-Based Power Budget Extender Providing a High-Power Gain of 54dB in Symmetric-Rate 10G-EPON System

Abstract

We propose the cost-effective bit-level coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM)-based power budget extender (PBEx) that can provide a high link budget of 54dB in a symmetric-rate 10-Gbit/s Ethernet passive optical network (10/10G-EPON). The proposed CWDM-based PBEx comprises a 2R-based 10/10G-EPON central office terminal (COT) and 3R-based 10/10G-EPON remote terminal (RT). It can apply several conventional CWDM technologies at the feeder fiber to reduce the amount of optical fiber required and increase the link capacity. Thus, it mainly conducts a wavelength conversion and signal retiming, as well as an upstream burst-mode for a continuous-mode conversion. We experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of a CWDM-based PBEx through packet-level testing using a pre-commercialized 10/10G-EPON system. We can confirm that the proposed solution can support a 128-way split at a distance of over 40km per CWDM channel with an enlarged loss budget of 54dB. We can also satisfy loss-free service during a packet transmission of 10¹⁰ both downstream and upstream.