Experimental demonstration of polarization multiplexing for simultaneously providing broadband wireless and wired access

A fiber-based wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) network utilizing polarization multiplexing (PolMUX) is proposed to simultaneously provide broadband wireless and wired services. In such a dual-service access network, the wireless and wired services are separately delivered in two orthogonal states of polarization with well independence in a single WDM channel. The impact of several polarization-dependent interferences becomes insignificant due to the relatively short transmission distance in access networks. The feasibility of PolMUX is experimentally demonstrated with a power penalty at BER = 10-9 of about 0.5 dB and 1 dB for 2.5 Gb/s wired and wireless downstream services, respectively. The proposed system is compatible with the current reported techniques in either WDM passive optical networks (WDM-PON) or radio-over-fiber (ROF) systems.