Temperature-Robust Monitoring of TDM-PONs Through Optical Coding Assisted by Broadband \lambda-Tunable I-OFDR

We present a technique for remote monitoring of time-division multiplexed passive optical networks (TDM-PONs) based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) encoders interrogated by a broadband incoherent optical frequency-domain reflectometer (I-OFDR). Compared with previous approaches, the proposed system features inherent high robustness against temperature-induced wavelength shifts in the FBG-encoders. The I-OFDR-based monitoring unit enables measurements with high resolutions and sensitivities without the need for high peak-power monitoring signals, which minimizes its footprint on the data links. We carry out a comprehensive description of the system and we evaluate its capacity in terms of signal-to-interference ratio (SIR). We show that, through suitable windowing, a SIR \geq 20 dB can be achieved in highly-dense TDM-PONs having more than 128 customers through the use of moderate measurement bandwidths of 300 MHz. We experimentally demonstrate the proposal in a TDM-PON carrying a 10 Gbps downstream data signals, obtaining a negligible impact in the downlink performance, such as the bit error rate remains below 10^{-6}.