NTT trials optical amplifier technology for next-gen PON

NTT Group (NYSE: NTT) says it has carried out a successful field trial of an optical amplification technology that “provides inexpensive wide dynamic range optical amplifiers and can handle burst signals generated in Ethernet PON systems.”

The technology has been developed under the research contract “Research and development of wide area optical access networks” by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan.

The optical amplifiers developed by NTT include an automatic level control (ALC) technology that can assess the input burst signals and, at high speed, adjust them to a constant level by controlling optical attenuators. For reasons of size, cost, and the ability to match the wavelengths of optical signals used for access systems, semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) were adopted as the gain medium.

Combining SOAs with ALC and Ethernet PON systems based on IEEE 802.3av standards, NTT conducted transmission experiments with total span lengths of over 100 km and confirmed good transmission characteristics at the communication speed of 10 Gbps. NTT says it also tested real-time bidirectional transmission of uncompressed high-definition video and confirmed excellent transmission characteristics.

The field trial was carried out in a test bed configured in Hokkaido prefecture, in the north of Japan, by connecting NTT East buildings in Sapporo, Toyohira, Eniwa, and Chitose using optical fibers with a total length over 100 km.

NTT plans to improve the optical amplifier technology to offer better performance in smaller packages, and to develop environmentally-robust and highly reliable devices.

NTT presented its results on March 8 at OFC/NFOEC in Los Angeles.