Future Optical Access Network and Spectral M-Ary ASK OCDM as Its Key Technology

This paper presents spectral multi-level (M-ary) amplitude shift keying (ASK) optical code-division-multiplexing (OCDM) as a key technology for future optical access network. A novel transmitter configuration to achieve flexible scalability that is required in future optical access network is proposed. The transmitter employs pre-biasing circuits and dummy data input. Pre-biasing circuits enable us to achieve high tolerance to multiple access interference by compensating for the nonlinearity of the M-ary ASK and increase the number of multiplexed binary data streams. By inputting the dummy data into the transmitter so that the total number of multiplexed binary data streams including those that actually accommodate users/services and the dummy streams remains constant, the number of users/services can be increased up to the total number of data streams without changing the parameters for pre-biasing. Therefore, the proposed transmitter can flexibly enhance the scalability of the spectral M-ary ASK OCDM. The formulas for calculating the bit error rate characteristics are described when using the conventional and proposed transmitters. The feasibility of the proposed transmitter is verified theoretically using the established formulas. key words: optical access network, optical code-division-multiplexing, Mary ASK, pre-biasing