Power saving technique suitable for DWDM-PON on aircraft

Growth in demand for high bandwidth sensors and real time video capture on aircraft has stimulated a need for high data capacity avionic communications networks. Implementing a communications network to accommodate such traffic using Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) components is highly desirable since this allows the avionics sector to benefit from the economies of scale associated with the telecommunications marketplace. Fibre optic based communications are ideally positioned to address these needs and ensure that communications networks are protected against future demands for increasing bandwidth. To take advantage of COTS components the aircraft networks can look to exploit components and techniques used in local access networks. The wavelength-division-multiplexed passive optical network (WDM-PON) is being considered as the next step towards a simple future proofed network, for aircraft networks, arguably the most pressing concern is the power consumption of the network. Recently [1] has analysed the power consumption of critical network components within an optical transmission system. The analysis considered different data rates and many different transmitter/receiver designs. In general it was established that, while there are small savings that can be obtained by optimising the receiver electronics design, a major consideration within the overall power budget of the network was identified as being the power required to drive the optical transmitters. In this paper we theoretically assess a technique using optical amplification to minimise the overall power consumption of optical components forming a WDM-PON in environments representative of those found on aircraft.