SOA Pre-Amplified 100 Gb/s/λ PAM-4 TDM-PON Downstream Transmission Using 10 Gbps O-Band Transmitters

We experimentally demonstrate the downstream transmission of a 100 Gb/s/λ time division multiplexed passive optical network (TDM-PON) based on four-level pulsed amplitude modulation (PAM-4) in the O-band using 10 Gbps transmitters with semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and digital signal processing (DSP) at the receiver. Considering the soft-decision FEC (SD-FEC) threshold (1 × 10 −2 ), power budget of 30.3 dB and 29.3 dB have been achieved after 22 km and 50 km fiber transmission, respectively. There is no observable dispersion penalty after 22 km and 50 km transmission. The possibility of 100 Gb/s/λ PON is first investigated using intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) schemes rather than coherent detection schemes.