Enhanced Time and Wavelength Division Multiplexed Passive Optical Network (TWDM-PON) for Triple-Play Broadband Service Delivery in FTTx Networks

Abstract

Nowadays service providers are facing serious competition and are looking for new ways to address their customers' very high-bandwidth demands and emerging trends as immersive video communications and ubiquitous cloud computing. Optical access successfully proved that it is a crucial broadband technology that is proposed to meet these challenges. In this paper, the wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) PON together with TDMA as a hybrid PON technology will be proposed and investigated for enhancing the system reachability, capability, and accommodation of users. For this purpose, fiber to the home (FTTH) networks using PONs, Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Networks (GPONs) and 10G-PONs that are designed using generic architectures and implemented using OptiSystem. Simulation results based on a broad set of performance measures such as bit rate, power losses, transmission distance and number of users showed that the proposed generic transmission architecture is suitable for up- and down-stream transmission of triple play traffic over optical links of up to 10 Gbps and the ability to accommodate 32 ONUs. The second part of this paper presents the development of a wavelength division multiplexing PON (WDM-PON) model in which array waveguide gratings (AWGs) are used to MUX and DEMUX wavelengths to or from Optical Network Units (ONUs). The proposed design addresses the real-time consistency between the wavelengths of optical transceivers and the connecting AWG port; and between the wavelengths of the port on the AWG that is located in the central office and the port on the remote AWG. The experimental tests using 100 or 200 GHz channel spacing and several tens of nm between up- and down-stream channel clusters showed the ability of multiplexing up- and downstream of 40-channels based on the commercially available AWG, providing the ability to accommodate 40 ONUs. The last part in this paper discusses the designs of a symmetric 4×40Gbps TWDM-PON network for the next generation passive optical networks to improve the network capacity. In this design a distributed feedback (DFB) laser diode is used for downstream transmission and a tunable intensity modulated grating laser is used for upstream transmission. The experimental results of this design showed that TWDM-PON achieved successfully 4×40Gbps along 20km fiber at 1:128 splitting providing the ability to accommodate up 128 ONUs. To the best of my knowledge, the proposed system provides two times larger number of ONUs than currently available systems.