Improving the efficiency of light distribution in PON for service Article

Improving the efficiency of light distribution in PON for service delivery in Fiber to the Home (FTTH) environments - Article Example This is true in wide area networks (WANs) that provide connectivity between cities and in metropolitan area networks (MANs) that connect telco operators’ nodes within cities. However, most local loop or the â€Å"last mile† that serve residential, small business or enterprise users, have not benefited from this. The local subscriber lines for telephone and Internet are still using twisted copper pairs while cable television subscribers are still using copper coaxial cable [1]. With the increasing users’ demands for services such as Internet applications, VoIP, interactive games, high-definition television (HDTV) and video on demand (VOD), the â€Å"last mile† connection has become a bandwidth bottleneck. Developments in xDSL and cable TV technologies has in some extent addressed this problem but still not enough to meet the continuously increasing bandwidth demand. A more effective solution is gradually being put in place especially in urban areas by extending the fiber to the user. This technology is called by many names depending on the termination mode – fiber to the home (FTTH), fiber to the curb (FTTC) or fiber to the building (FTTB). All of these FTTx solutions may utilize the Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) distribution technology. This system utilizes bandwidth allocation algorithms to allow efficient sharing of limited upstream channel bandwidth [2]. Different methods of implementing this will be discussed in this art icle. An EPON system is a point-to-multipoint fiber optical network with no active elements in the transmission path from the source, an optical line terminal (OLT), to the destination, an optical network unit (ONU). It can use different multipoint topologies, such as bus, ring, and tree. The most typical architecture is based on a tree topology and consists of an OLT, a 1:N passive star coupler (or splitter/combiner), and multiple ONU. The OLT