Characterization of highly-sensitive and fast-responding monitoring module for extended-reach passive optical networks

Abstract

The extended-reach broadband access network is widely acknowledged as a future-proof solution to providing bandwidth-intensive services to an increased number of users spread across a large geographical area. To address fiber failure detection and reliability issues specific to these networks, a simple automatic protection switching and pump laser shutdown scheme that exploits the use of highly-sensitive and fast-responding monitoring modules is proposed and experimentally demonstrated in this work. We also present an analytical model that describes the probability distribution function of the response time, thus allowing the mean response time, jitter, and sensitivity to be evaluated. Our results show a high sensitivity of < -50 dBm can be achieved, thus allowing the module to be applied in topologies with extended reach and/or split ratio beyond that of conventional PONs.