Optical Architectural Solution for Coherent Burst Mode Transmitter

A coherent transmitter configured for time division multiple access (TDMA) burst transmission, the coherent transmitter comprising:

• one or more lasers comprising either i) a single laser tunable between an active frequency for the TDMA burst transmission and a dummy frequency different from the active frequency, or ii) two lasers including an active laser to output the active frequency and a dummy laser to output the dummy frequency;
• and
• a modulator configured to receive an output of the one or more lasers,
• wherein at least one of the one or more lasers are always on to provide laser stability.

A passive optical network (PON) comprising:

• an optical line terminal (OLT);
• and
• a plurality of optical network units (ONUs) configured to optically connect to the OLT via an optical distribution network (ODU),
• wherein each of the plurality of ONUs include
• one or more lasers;
• and
• a modulator configured to receive an output of the one or more lasers, wherein the output of the one or more lasers has a dummy frequency while an ONU is not assigned to transmit data to the OLT and has an active frequency while the ONU is assigned to transmit data to the OLT.