Self-tuning transmitter for fibre-to-the-antenna PON networks

WDM PONs offering point-to-point connectivity, independence of multiple access protocol to share the medium are good candidates for supporting the new fronthaul fibre network requirements. The necessity to allow inventory and maintenance cost reduction will favour WDM PON solutions based on colourless transceivers. We present the proposal of a network embedded self-tuning colourless transmitter, based on reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA) self-seeding architectures. We analyse the fibre-to-the-antenna network requirements and evidence the capabilities of the network embedded self-tuning colourless transmitter, showing its principle of operation, the development and the modelling of the active elements. We present and discuss recent experimental results up to 10 Gbit/s, which are encouraging for the transmitter exploitation in fronthaul WDM multiplexing technology.