Heterodyne video distribution systems sharing transmitter and local oscillator lasers

The authors present theoretical and experimental results for coherent subcarrier multiplexed (SCM) systems using a novel architecture that shares both the transmitter and local oscillator (LO) laser among multiple optoelectronic receivers. The ability to share both lasers significantly reduces the cost and complexity compared to a multichannel coherent frequency division multiplexed (FDM) system. Experimental results confirm that the system performance can be greatly enhanced by inserting an inline optical amplifier so that many receivers can share one transmitter and LO laser. For example, with an amplifier chip gain of 24 dB, increasing the optical power at the input to the amplifier by 3 dB from -27.6 to -24.5 dBm, the number of receivers can be increased from 2 to 32