A simple bidirectional hybrid optical link for alternatively providing wired and wireless accesses based on an optical phase modulator

A simple bidirectional hybrid optical link based on an optical phase modulator (OPM) is proposed to alternatively provide wired and wireless accesses. At the optical line terminal, only an OPM along with an optical band-pass filter is employed to generate the data-bearing four-tone downlink optical signal. At the hybrid optical network unit (HONU), both the downlink wired and wireless access electrical signals are simply generated based on the direct detection. Meanwhile, since the optical carrier for the uplink can be abstracted from the downlink, the HONU is free from the light source. To demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed scheme, a proof-of-concept bidirectional hybrid optical access link based on the OptiSystem platform is built. The simulation results indicate that after 30-km-long standard single-mode fiber transmission, the proposed bidirectional hybrid optical link still maintains good performance.