All-optical VPN utilizing DSP-based digital orthogonal filters access for PONs

Utilizing digital filtering-enabled signal multiplexing and de-multiplexing, a cost-effective all-optical virtual private network (VPN) system is proposed, for the first time to our best knowledge, in digital filter multiple access passive optical networks (DFMA-PONs). Based on the DFMA technology, the proposed system can be easily designed to meet the requirements of next generation network's flexibility, elasticity, adaptability and compatibility. Through dynamic digital filter allocation and recycling, the proposed all-optical VPN system can provide dynamic establishments and cancellations of multiple VPN communications with arbitrary traffic volumes. More importantly, due to the employment of DFMA technology, the system is not limited to a fixed signal format and different signal formats such as pulse amplitude modulation (PAM), quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) can be used. Moreover, one transceiver is sufficient to simultaneously transmit upstream (US)/VPN data to optical line terminal (OLT) or other VPN optical network units (ONUs), thus leading to great reduction in network constructions and operation expenditures. The proposed all-optical VPN system is demonstrated with the transceiver incorporating the formats of QAM and OFDM, which can be made transparent to downstream (DS), US and VPN communications. The bit error rates (BERs) of DS, US and VPN for OFDM signals are below the forward-error-correction (FEC) limit of 3.8×10−3 when the received optical powers are about −16.8 dBm, −14.5 dBm and −15.7 dBm, respectively.