An overview of passive optical networks and components

Over the past few years, telecommunication networks have experienced a dramatic shift from traditional voice-dominated traffic to data-oriented, application-based traffic. The access network or the last-mile connecting households or businesses to the internet backbone, have been recognized as a major bottleneck in todays network hierarchy. The ongoing demand for new access networks that support high-speed (greater than 100 Mb/s), symmetric, and guaranteed bandwidths for future video services has been accelerated and the search for a cost-effective optical access solution has yielded a number of possible solutions. To satisfy the required bandwidth over a 20-km transmission distance, single-mode optical fiber is a natural choice. Passive Optical Networks (PONs) are promising access solutions that will open the last-mile bottleneck bringing data rates of 100 Mb/s to 1 Gb/s to the end-users. The goal of this work is to provide a cohesive overview of research done in the area of Fiber In The Loop (FITL) optical access technology. Specifically, it explores the area of Passive Optical Network (PON) : its history, variants, architecture, and standards. Various passive optical components which make a passive optical network work, are also discussed. Some laboratory emulations on RF over PON showing noise, distortion, and fading in the channels are then carried on using the Vector Signal Generator SMIQ03B (Rhode & Schwarz), and the Wireless Communication Analyzer WCA380 (SONY Tektronix).