A coherent optical FDM CATV distribution system

A coherent optical frequency-division-multiplexing (FDM) experimental system for an optical CATV distribution service has been developed. This system employs a channel frequency spacing locked optical FDM transmitter and a random access optical heterodyne receiver. In the transmitter, ten 1.54-μm wavelength tunable distributed-Bragg-reflector laser-diode (DBR LD) modules were FSK modulated with a 400-Mb/s PN pattern. A reference pulse method is used for channel space control. Individual channel spacings for ten LDs are stabilized to 8 GHz. The random access optical heterodyne receiver is realized with a wavelength tunable local DBR LD, polarization diversity reception technique, and random access automatic frequency controller. A current address method realizes the random access function. The results of a ten-channel FDM transmission experiment carried out to evaluate these techniques are presented. It is estimated that over 80 channel high-definition TV signals can be distributed to 2000 subscribers with 500-GHz frequency tunable DBR LD. The feasibility of expanding the subscriber number to over 10000 was confirmed by an experiment with a traveling-wave optical amplifier