Cost-effective, broadband passive optical network system

With the accelerating deployment of optical fibers in telephone access networks comes a need for strategies for upgrading these networks from handling telephones only to providing broad-band services. Successful strategies must meet both technical and financial goals1. Fortunately, the attainment of these goals has been aided by progress in digital compression technology, which greatly reduces the bandwidth required for broadband services2. In this paper we demonstrate a broadband passive optical network3 (PON) serving 16 optical network units (ONUs) in a modification of a system described previously4. The PON provides 39 Mbit/s outbound and 3 Mbit/s return for each ONU. These bit rates are sufficient to allow each O N U to receive, for example, several compressed digital video channels, each requiring 4-6 Mbids, and to send multiple video teleconferencing calls at 384 kbit/s apiece. The choice of components and architecture is intended to demonstrate a cost-effective solution to the broadband upgrade problem.