Future PON technologies

Written on 3:51 PM by ooe

Current PON technology is limited to 622 Mbit/s, however, this is not a practical limit for this technology, merely the highest agreed bit rate supported by the ITU-T. The IEEE and FSAN are already considering systems with 1.25 Gbit/s PON speeds, and higher bit rates are feasible.

Whilst the IEEE Ethernet PONs are rumoured to be a lot cheaper that APON technology, so far no systems have been produced to test this hypotheses. Time will tell whether this technology will actually prove to be cheaper although many components will be common between the two architectures leading to some doubt as to the reduced cost claims.

Already we have seen experimental Super-PON architectures from Alcatel [3,4] where the split ratios can be increased from the more usual 32 to over 100, with thousands or more being possible. Furthermore, optical amplifier technology is making possible PONs with a transmission reach of thousands of kilometres.

WDM technology will allow common infrastructure to serve both residential and business end users, even if those businesses require very high point-to-point data rates.