Power optimized OSSB modulation to support multi-band OFDM services along hybrid long-reach WDM-PONs

• Optical single sideband transmission of multi-services based on OFDM.
• General expressions for the IMD products upon direct-detection.
• Optimization of modulation efficiency in the OSSB modulation.
• Sketch of the spectrum of all IMD products of the direct-detection of five OFDM signals.
• Mitigating the intermodulation distortion generated after direct-detection.

In this paper, optical single sideband (OSSB) transmission of multi-services based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with different signal constellations is investigated through numerical simulation, when the modulation efficiency obtained with a dual-electrode Mach–Zehnder modulator (DE-MZM) is optimized by biasing it below its quadrature point. Furthermore, in order to overcome the intermodulation distortion resulting from modulation efficiency optimization, it is demonstrated that driving each electrical signal with a different electrical power is an effective solution for the signals considered. As result of the optimization, successful delivery after 130 km of a hybrid OSSB signal composed by a custom 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) OFDM gigabit Ethernet (GbE) signal, a 20 MHz 64-QAM LTE signal and three independent OFDM-UWB channels of the first group of ECMA-386 is demonstrated, with negligible power penalty.