First Demonstration of Six-Mode PON Achieving a Record Gain of 4 dB in Upstream Transmission Loss Budget

The power budget and costs are the two primary concerns for access networks. A major challenge is to minimize upstream power combining loss to increase the power budget. Spatial modes multiplexing offers the possibility to minimize upstream combining loss without significant added costs. We demonstrate the first integrated six-mode passive optical network, utilizing spatial modes to eliminate upstream combining loss. A record 4-dB net gain in power budget was achieved by fusion splicing a photonic lantern with a FMF, in contrast to the traditional power combining scheme with a single-mode power combiner/splitter. BERs < 10(-9) were obtained for all the six modes enabling Ethernet transmission using commercial GPON equipment. The packet loss of all six modal channels was tested for 12 h. Finally, we discuss some special issues of few-mode PON regarding its practical application.