An upstream reach-extender for 10Gb/s PON applications based on an optimized semiconductor amplifier cascade.

We present a reach-extender for the upstream transmission path of 10Gb/s passive optical networks based on an optimised cascade of two semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). Through careful optimisation of the bias current of the second stage SOA, over 19dB input dynamic range and up to 12dB compression of the output dynamic range were achieved without any dynamic control. A reach of 70km and split up to 32 were demonstrated experimentally using an ac-coupled, continuous-mode receiver with a reduced 56ns ac-coupling constant.