Quadruple impact of SPM, XPM, FWM and SRS nonlinear impairments on the performance of DWDM-PON

Abstract Recently, dense wavelength division multiplexing passive optical networks (DWDM-PONs) have become a considerable choice for 5G and beyond fronthaul implementations. Formerly, we have proposed a full-duplex bidirectional DWDM-PON architecture convenient for those implementations and analyzed the combined dual impact of four-wave mixing (FWM) and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) nonlinear impairments on the proposed architecture. Meanwhile, a detailed literature analysis showed us that the combined quadruple impact of self phase modulation (SPM), cross phase modulation (XPM), FWM and SRS on the performance of bidirectional DWDM-PONs have never been researched up to now. In this paper, quadruple impact of SPM, XPM, FWM and SRS on the performance of both uplink channels (ULCs) and downlink channels (DLCs) of the formerly proposed DWDM-PON has been analyzed with simulations. Simulations have been performed in O-band region for ULCs and in C-band region for DLCs of 2 × 15- and 2 × 63-channel DWDM-PONs having 12.5 GHz, 25 GHz, 50 GHz, 100 GHz equally-spaced channels. The quadruple impact of optical nonlinear impairments on the DWDM-PON performance has been analyzed with signal-to-crosstalk ratio (SXR) simulations performed under varying channel input powers and channel lengths. Results show that under the quadruple nonlinear impact reliable bidirectional transmission with an SXR over 23 dB can be achieved for channel input powers below 0.58 mW and 0.16 mW in 2 × 15- and 2 × 63-channel DWDM-PONs, respectively, for all channel spacing values and 25 km transmission lengths. Moreover, results also imply that variations in channel lengths do not significantly affect SXR at both ULCs and DLCs of 2 × 15- and 2 × 63-channel DWDM-PONs for lengths exceeding 50 km. The thorough analysis presented in the paper will give a new insight for analysis of conventional and next generation PONs.