Modern Passive Optical Network (PON) Technologies
Authors: Chochliouros Ioannis P. , Spiliopoulou Anastasia S. 
Published: May 2011

Presently, not only the European Union (EU) but the global community faces a decisive priority to “redesign” its economy and society, in order to meet a variety of challenges imposed by the expansion of innovative technological features, in the scope of the new millennium. The rate of investments performed and the rapid development of electronic communications networks-infrastructures, together with all associated facilities in the scope of broadband evolution, create novel major opportunities for the related market sectors (Chochliouros, & Spiliopoulou, 2005). Modern digitalbased technologies make compulsory new requirements for next-generation components and for much wider electronics integration. This critical challenge also raises the issue for considering the “evolution” from current large legacy infrastructures towards new (more convenient) ones, by striking a “balance” between backward compatibility requirements and the need to explore disruptive architectures to appropriately build (and offer) future Internet, broadband, and related service infrastructures. More specifically, for the entire European market a number of evolutionary initiatives, as they currently have been encouraged by the latest EU strategic frameworks, relate first and foremost to the technological expansion and the exploitation of ubiquitous broadband networks, the availability/accessibility of dynamic services platforms, and the offering of “adequate” trust and security, all in the framework of converged and interoperable networked environments (European Commission, 2006). However the global information society cannot deliver its major benefits without a “suitable” and appropriately deployed infrastructure, able to fulfill all requirements for increased bandwidth. During recent years, optics and photonics have become increasingly pervasive in a broad range of applications. Therefore, photonic components and subsystems are nowadays indispensable in multiple application areas, and consequently they constitute concerns of high-strategic importance for many operators. In this critical extent, fiber is constantly becoming an essential priority for wired access, as it can provide excessive bandwidth and additional advantages, if compared to similar alternative options of underlying infrastructures (Agrawal, 2002). There are several market and investment evidences demonstrating that a significant part of next-generation access networks will be based on optical access (Chochliouros, Spiliopoulou, & Lalopoulos, 2005). This is due to the fact that we are presently witnessing an extraordinary expansion in bandwidth demand, mainly driven by the development of sophisticated services/applications, including video-on-demand (VoD), interactive high-definition digital television (HDTV), IPTV, multi-party videoconferencing, and many more. These facilities require both the existence and the use of a “fitting” underlying network infrastructure, capable of supporting high-speed data transmission rates that cannot be fulfilled by the “traditional” copper-based access networks. In fact, market actors are currently focusing on developing and deploying new network infrastructures (Leiping, 2005) that will constitute future-proof solutions in terms of the anticipated worldwide growth in bandwidth demand (reaching a rate of 50% to 100% annually), but at the same time be economically viable (Prat, Balaquer, Gene, Diaz, & Fiquerola, 2002). To this aim, fiberaccess technologies evolve quite rapidly as they can guarantee “infinite” bandwidth opportunities, for all prescribed market needs, either corporate and/or residential.