Passive Optical Network (PON) is a form of fiber-optic access network that uses point-to-multipoint fiber to the premises in which unpowered optical splitters are used to enable a single optical fiber to serve multiple premises. A PON system consists of an OLT at the service provider's central office and a number of ONU units near end users, with an ODN between the OLT and ONU. PON reduces the amount of fiber and central office equipment required compared with point-to-point architectures.
- Passive Optical Network (PON)
The most obvious advantage of the PON network is the elimination of the outdoor active devices. All the signals processing functions are completed in the switches and the user premises equipment. The upfront investment of this access methods are small, and the most funds investment is postponed until the user really access. Its transmission distance is shorter than the active optical access system. The coverage is also smaller, but it is low cost, no need to set the engine room, and easy to maintain. So this structure can be economically serve for the home users.
PON Development Background
Seen from the entire network structures, due to the larger numbers of laying optical fibers, and widely applications of DWDM technology, the backbone network has been a breakthrough in the development. The same time, due to advances in Ethernet technology, its dominant LAN bandwidth has increased from 10M, 100M to 1G or 10G.. At present, what we are concerned about is the part between the network backbone and local area networks, home users; this is often said that the "last mile", which a bottleneck is. Must break this bottleneck, may user in the new world of the online world. It is as if in a national highway system, trunk and regional roads have been built in the broad high-grade highway, but leads to the families and businesses of the door was still narrow winding path, the efficiency of the road network cannot play.
