A Frequency Reuse-Based Design for Flexible and Scalable Passive Optical Networks (PONs)

The accelerated growth in the bandwidth demand emphasizes the necessity to evolve from the currently deployed gigabit-class passive optical networks (PONs) to the next-generation optical access networks (NG-OANs). Different architectures were proposed in the literature in order to create a NG-OAN that is able to fulfilling the aforementioned goal. In this paper, a time-division multiplexing (TDM)/dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) scheme was proposed. The proposed scheme is sought to satisfy the current and future anticipated bandwidth demands. The architecture we proposed was able to allow different bit rate optical line terminals OLTs to use the same frequency band, and transmit their services over a 24 km shared feeder to 16 passive remote terminals (PRTs) with 16 ONU group for each. Each group can accommodate up to 16 ONU, total of 256 ONU/PRT, resulting in overall system capacity 4096 ONU. The architecture also allows the independent-upgradeability for each optical network terminal ONU.