TMN4053 Broadband Network Technology

PASSIVE OPTICAL NETWORK (PON)

PON Architecture Overview
• Mainly used for access network (end user) as it is
cheaper and massive
• The conventional WDM technologies for fiber can be too
expensive
• Fiber offers unlimited bandwidth and good for future
expansion
• PON is a fiber optic access network
• Provide connection between Central Office and End
User
• Also known as the FTTx, where x can be home, office,
etc. Actually FTTx can have broader meaning.
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Generic structure of a modern
telecommunication network

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Alternatives of FTTx
• An active or passive Remote Terminal (RT) with
multiplexing function is used in the field to reduce the
total fiber mileage in the field.
• PON is the one uses passive RT
• In optical access networks, the final cable drop to the
customer can be either
– Fiber (FTTH)
– Coaxial (HFC)
– Twisted pair or radio (FTTC)
• They difference by whether the ONU (Optical Network
Unit) is at the end user end or in neighbourhood and
extend through copper or radio links
Typical PON Architecture

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FTTx alternative
Architecture of TMD- and WDM-PON

TDM-PON

WDM-PON

Fiber plant from the optical line terminal (OLT) at a CO to the optical network units (ONUs) at
customer sites is completely passive.
Type of PON: TDM-PON
Signal from different ONUs
Use passive power splitter as the are multiplexed in time
Remote Terminal (RT) where the same domain. Recognize their own
signal from OLT is broadcasted to message based on the
different ONUs by the power splitter. labels embedded in the
signal

• Most of the commercials (including PONS BPON, GPON, EPON) are in this category
Type of PON: WDM-PON
• Signal from different ONUs are carried on different
wavelengths and routed by the WDM coupler to the proper
ONU
• Advantage: Better privacy and scalability as each ONU only
received their own wavelength
• Disadvantage: Significantly more expensive

Uses a passive WDM coupler as

Remote Terminal 9
Bidirectional Transmission:
Two-fiber vs One-fiber
• Conventional system uses 2 separate fibers for
bidirectional communication, called space division
duplex or 2-fiber approach.
• No need separation between up stream (ONU to
OLT) and down stream (OLT to ONU) signal in time,
frequency or wavelength domains -> Simple to
implement.
• In PON, 2-fiber approach requires 2 power splitters
– More costly using 2 fibers and need to manage additional
power splitter
Bidirectional Transmission:
One fiber Single wavelength Full Duplex
• One optical fiber is used for both up and down
stream connection
• A simple 3-dB directional coupler is used at the OLT
and ONU to separate the upstream and
downstream optical signal
• Problems:
– 3.5-dB of signal loss at each end of the transmission link
and hurt system power budget.
– Transmitter signal scattered into local receiver as near-
end cross talk (NEXT)
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(a) One-fiber single-wavelength bidirectional transmission.
(b) Near-end cross talk (NEXT).
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Time Division Duplex
• The OLT and ONU takes turn to use the fiber in a ping
pong fashion for upstream and downstream
transmission.
• Similar to One fiber Single wavelength full duplex
approach where directional coupler is used.
• NEXT effect is avoided by separating upstream and
downstream signals in the time domain, at a cost of
reducing overall system throughput by 50%
• The OLT will coordinate the time slots assigned for
upstream and downstream transmissions.
Wavelength Division Duplex
• Separates upstream and downstream signals using different
wavelengths
• A coarse 1.3/1.5µm wavelength duplexing scheme is chosen
to separate upstream and downstream signals
• 1.5µm laser with narrow output spectrum (higher cost) is used
at OLT for downstream and 1.3µm laser (cheaper and cost
sharing by multiple ONUs) is used at ONU for upstream.

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Power Splitting Strategies in TDM-PON
• Purposes of power splitting
– Sharing of cost and bandwidth of OLT among ONUs
– Reducing of fiber mileage in the field
• Splitting strategies:
– One stage splitting
– Multistage splitting
– Optical bus
• Strategy used mainly depends on demography of users
and the cost to manage multiple splitters.
• Ideal is to have just single splitter for distribution, results in
easier splicing, minimum connectors, and splicing losses
Splitting Strategies

Splitting strategies in a TDM-PON: (a) one-stage splitting, (b) multistage splitting,

and (c) optical bus.
Power Splitting Ratio
• Common splitting ratio: 1:16 or 1:32
• Higher splitting ratio means the cost of PON OLT is better
shared among ONUs
• High splitting ratio also affect system power budget and
transmission loss. Higher ratio needs higher power transmitter,
higher sensitivity receiver and lower loss optical components
• Higher ratio also means less power left for transmission fiber loss
and smaller margin reserved for other system degradations
and variations
• Some studies suggest ratio of 1:40 is the most economical and
optimum
• High ratio also means OLT bandwidth is shared by more ONU
which leads to less bandwidth per user
Standard TDM-PON Infrastructure
• OLT connects to ONUs via 1:32 splitter
• Maximum transmission distance covered 10-20km
• Upstream traffic is carried on 1.3µm wavelength and
downstream traffic from OLT is on 1.49µm wavelength
• The ONU offers one or more ports for voice connection (T1/E1
for commercial or POTS for residential) and client data
connection (10/100BASE-T)
• Multiple OLTs in the CO are interconnect with a backbone
switch or cross-connect, which connected to the backbone
network
• OLTs are in line card form, which inserted into a chassis (chassis
can host the backbone switch) and interconnected via high
speed back plane.
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Standard TDM-PON Infrastructure
• Connection between OLT and ONU is called the PON section
• Signal transported in PON section can be encoded and multiplexed in
different formats and schemes depending on PON standard implemented
• Beyond PON section, standard format signal are used for client interface (i.e.,
Ethernet), switching, etc.
• In PON section, signals to and from each ONU are identified with a unique
ONU ID in the frame header
• The downstream link is a one-to-many broadcast connection, and the
upstream link is a many-to-one connection (frames sent by all ONUs will arrive
at the OLT but no two ONUs can send signal directly to each other on the
optical layer)
– communications between ONUs need to be forwarded to the CO and relayed
with the help of the OLT
Standard TDM-PON Architecture

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PON in Bario (OLT)

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PON in Bario (ONU)

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OLT Structures

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OLT Structures

The PMD (Physical layer dependent)

layer defines the optical transceiver and
the wavelength diplexer at OLT and ONU 26
 OLT Structures

• MAC (Medium access control) layer

schedules the right to use the physical
medium so that contention for the shared
fiber link is avoided among different ONUs
• MAC at OLT serves as the master and MAC
at ONU serves as the client, where OLT will
specify the staring and ending time a
particular ONU is allowed to transmit

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OLT Structures

Service adaptation layer in

OLT provides the translation
between the backbone signal
format and the PON section
signals

The interface from OLT to the backbone

network is called Service Network Interface
(SNI)
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 ONU Structures

The interface from ONU to client network

equipment is called User Network Interface
(UNI)
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Burst Mode Operation
• ONU has to turn off its transmitter whenever it did not send
data to avoid interfering with other ONUs
• Before ONU transmits signal burst to OLT, it needs to send a
preamble sequence to the OLT, where it is used by the OLT as
training sequence to adjust the decision threshold and
perform synchronization with the ONU
• A guard time is reserved between bursts from different ONUs to
allow the OLT receiver to recover to its initial stage before the
next burst. Note: Guard time adds overhead and reduces
bandwidth efficiency, which should be kept minimal in system
design
• To avoid collision between bursts from different ONUs, the
upstream transmission needs to be coordinated and
scheduled
Burst Mode Operation
• The Ethernet based collision detection protocol
(CSMA/CD) is not suitable to be used in PON because
– ONU cannot listen to the optical transmission of other ONUs
– Data rates and distance covered by a PON system greatly
exceeds the limits imposed by CSMA/CD
• Scheduling performs by OLT MAC and since ONUs
located at different distance from OLT, hence different
delays will be experience by different ONUs
• Timing reference is established between OLT and each
ONU so that OLT knows the exact timing the ONU is
suppose to transmit.
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Ranging Process
• Timing reference is established via the Ranging process
• Ranging measures the round-trip delay between an
ONU and OLT
• OLT send out a ranging request to ONUs to be ranged,
then the participating ONU will reply a ranging response
to OLT, where Round-trip time (RTT) is measured and
updates the ONU with this delay
• RTT is stored in both OLT and ONU so that the timing for
data frames from ONU can be adjusted and scheduled
• All ONUs are aligned to a common logical time
reference after ranging so that collision does not occur
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Ranging Process
• During ranging, OLT sends out ranging request and reserve a
time period called ranging window for unranged ONUs to
respond
• Ranging window is defined by the maximum differential delay
between the closest ONU and the furthest ONU
• Again, large ranging window can reduce bandwidth
efficiency as it introduces overhead to the PON system
• Ranging usually done at the time an ONU joins a PON.
• OLT will also periodically broadcast ranging requests for ONU
discovery
• Collision may occur if multiple ONUs attempt to join the PON at
the same time, which resolve by ONUs backing off with a
random delay
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Security Concern in Power Splitting PON
• The broadcast nature of the PON downstream make it easy to
eavesdrop downstream communication signals by malicious users
• But ONU cannot listen to the signal of another ONU due to the
optical star coupler at the remote terminal
• When OLT broadcast the serial number and ID of the ONU,
malicious user can make use of this information for spoofing.
• Hence, an authentication process during which the ONU is verified
by a password known only to the OLT
• Alternatively, data for downstream connection can be scrambled
with a key established between ONU and OLT. The encryption key is
sent from an ONU to OLT via a defined protocol (in the secure
upstream link)
• For further enhancement, the security key can be updated
periodically.
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ATM-PON (APON)
• Defined under the ITU G.983 standard
• Implementation can be either symmetric or asymmetric.

• Different class of attenuation:

– Class A: 5-20dB
– Class B: 10-25dB
– Class C: 15-30dB
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ATM-PON (APON)
• APON signals are transported in time slots.
• Each time slot is either the size of an ATM cell or a
PLOAM (physical layer OAM) cell.
• PLOAM cells carry management information (all
protocol messages between OLT and ONU)

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ATM-PON (APON)

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Gigabit PON (GPON)
• GPON is to overcome the high cost implementation caused
by ATM switching in APON
• Bit rates define as:
– Downstream: 1244.16Mbps / 2488.32Mbps
– Upstream: 155.52Mbps / 622.08Mbps / 1244.16Mbps / 2488.32Mbps
• Due to operating at high speed range, equipment quality
upgrade is needed, i.e., more powerful laser transmitter, more
sensitive receiver, etc.
• Power-leveling mechanism is used to balance the power
received at OLT, where closer ONU transmits less power and
farther ONU transmits more power to compensate more losses.
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Ethernet PON (EPON)
• EPON layering similar to the traditional P2P Ethernet
• The optional MAC sublayer in P2P Ethernet is replaced with a
mandatory muiltipoint media access control (MPMC) layer to
coordinate the shared PON medium among ONUs.
• The OLT’s MPMC acts as the Master and ONU’s MPMC acts as the
Slave
• EPON specifies the minimum splitting ratio of 1:16, support up to
32,768 different logical ONUs through a 15-bit logical link identifier
(LLID)
• 2 different reaches between OLT and ONUs:
– 10km (1000BASE-PX10-D / U PMD)
– 20km (1000BASE-PX20-D / U PMD)
• ONUs are the same for both 10km and 20km except for the OLT,
aiming to reduce overall cost
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EPON

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G-PON and EPON Comparison
• Major difference:
– GPON support TDM circuits (125μs frames) which guarantee
bandwidth between OLT and ONUs
– EPON uses variable length native Ethernet frames. Required circuit
emulation for fixed bandwidth TDM circuit implementation
– Reporting overhead gets higher as number of logical IDs gets more
(EPON)

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Super PON
• Aims to support longer distance (>20km) and higher
splitting ratio (1:64 or 1:128)

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Question?