Abstract:
A fiber pigtailed network monitoring module incorporating an optical printed circuit board on which a signal-transferring connection is remotely actuated between electronic components mounted on the board and active and/or passive optical devices mounted on the board to generate remotely readable monitoring signals.

Description:
SUMMARY 
       [0001]    A scalable optical printed circuit board is disclosed that allows for optical monitoring in a Passive Optical Network (PON), keeping its passive optical character. The concept of the optical pcb incorporates a planar waveguide optical splitter, a detector, a CMOS transistor chip, a rechargeable battery, and a Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) array. A distinction can be made between a solution for a split PON where the splitters are already deployed in a splitter node and a solution for a new ‘green field’ PON that still needs to be deployed. For the former, a separate VCSEL transmitter device can be spliced between the splitter output port and the fiber of the distribution cable. For the latter, an integrated module can be spliced to the feeder cable from the Central Office (CO) and the distribution cable protruding to the Optical Network Units (ONUs). By means of a trigger signal that can be recognized by each VCSEL separately and that is multiplexed at the central office to the downstream traffic, a test pulse is generated at the splitter node by the VCSEL. The back reflections of this signal can be measured by an Optical Time Delay Reflectometer (OTDR) at the central office. This OTDR device can be shared for measurement of different PON&#39;s by means of fiber optic switches. By appropriate software analysing and reworking the OTDR data, operators can make a map of the loss evolution of their PON over time. 
       BACKGROUND 
       [0002]    In a Passive Optical Network (PON), optical fibers are deployed in a central split or dual split branch arrangement in order to distribute signals from the OLT (Optical Line Transmitters?) in the central office towards a plurality of ONU&#39;s at the subscriber&#39;s residence. In order to identify failures in the network that need to be restored when a subscriber lacks service, optical time domain reflectometry (OTDR) is used. For a distributed split PON, this method is inappropriate since OTDR measurements carried out from the central office cannot distinguish between the superpostition of the back reflected signals from the splitter branches. Consequently, it is not possible to locate the fault after the split branch. As a result, field technicians (technicians that have to go into the field equipped with an OTDR) are necessary to do measurements after the split branch to identify possible failures. 
         [0003]    The negative drawbacks of this approach are (1) that it is a very expensive method that cannot be used to measure the network pro-actively on a regular basis; and (2) that for field technician measurements, connectors are needed in the outside plant in order to allow for connecting the OTDR equipment to the cable infrastructure. This can lead to connector failures over time in case cleaning precautions have not been taken into account by the field technician crews. In addition, the lifetime of the network elements where the monitoring has to be carried out is fairly reduced due to a substantial number of re-entrances in the network element. Known systems are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,396,575 of W. R. Holland (Lucent), U.S. Pat. No. 6,771,358 of M. Shigeghara and H. Kanomori (Sumitomo), and US Reissue Pat. 36471 of L. G. Cohen (Lucent). 
     
    
     DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
       [0004]    A scalable solution for PON monitoring is presented. For a PON that is already deployed, the monitoring solution can be implemented by splicing a dual port device (see  FIG. 1 ) or a multiple port device (see  FIG. 2 ) into the port(s) of a splitter branch and a fiber(s) of the distribution cable (situation A). 
         [0005]    For a green field PON that still needs to be deployed the solution consists of an optical pcb, where the planar splitter is mounted on the board. The connection between the optical devices on the board is done via optical fibers and fiber coupling devices. These fiber coupling devices can consist of alignment grooves and refractive micro lenses. The integrated module has an input port that can be spliced or connectorised to the feeder fiber and a multiple output port that can be spliced to the fibers of the distribution cable going to the ONU&#39;s. (situation B). 
         [0006]    A schematic lay out of the concept that is needed for situation A is depicted in  FIG. 1 . 
         [0007]    Port ( 1 ) is the input port of the device that is spliced or connected to an output port of the planar splitter. That can be a 250 μm coated fiber, a 900 μm coated fiber, a 3 mm cable, or a connectorised pigtail with different connectors. The same applies to the output port ( 2 ). The add/drop coupler device ( 3 ) demultiplexes a trigger (pump) signal for activating the VCSEL from the input port. For this optical device a filter WDM (wavelength demultiplexer?) can be used or a diffractive (binary diffractive or Fresnel diffractive) lens system like that described in patent case U.S. Pat. No. 6,243,513 B1 can be used to decouple the pump from the input fiber. These micro optic components can if necessary be mounted on the pcb or chip via flip chip bonding techniques. The light from the pump signal impinges on the detector. Depending on the wavelength of the pump signal used, this can be a Si-based detector or a GaAs detector. A CMOS transistor-chip ( 5 ) collects the optical signal and boosts the power into a charge collector ( 7 ) that is rechargeable each time a VCSEL needs to be activated by a triggering signal from the Central Office. When an appropriate digital sequence is received, (intelligence that via the CMOS circuit can be built into the system) a dedicated VCSEL starts to emit a short intense pulse. The VCSEL output is collected by microlenses or other coupling optics into the add port of the add/drop coupler devices. As a result, the VSCEL signal is coupled in the output fiber of the transmitter device. This creates an OTDR pulse that starts in the selected branch and which will only propagate to one dedicated ONU. The optical sensor (of an OTDR system) at the CO will consequently receive an OTDR trace of the only selected branch. 
         [0008]    It is clear that for this situation the pump signal to trigger the VCSELs is attenuated by the coupler. This solution can be adopted when the take rates are low and all the splitter ports are not already connected to an ONU. This should be considered as a grow-as-you-go method which is of course more expensive than the other options. 
         [0009]    When the splitter has however no output ports available (in a “parking lot”), a filter WDM can demultiplex the pump signal from the splitter port (see  FIG. 2   a ). The configuration of the device depicted in  FIG. 1  is then also different. It basically has N+1 input ports and N output ports. The N+1 input ports need to be spliced to the N output branches of the splitter and the extra input port needs to spliced to the pump demultiplexer branch of the WDM device that decouples the pump light from the downstream traffic. 
         [0010]    FIG.  2 . a  shows the configuration when an extra WDM device is spliced into the feeder fiber and the splitter output port. The demultiplexer port of the WDM is spliced to the VCSEL array device. The output ports of the planar splitter are also spliced to the VCSEL array component. 
         [0011]      FIG. 2   b  shows the internal configuration of the device depicted in  FIG. 2   a.  An optical waveguide board with multiple couplers that couple light from a transmitter array (preferably a VCSEL array). 
         [0012]    For a green field situation however, the solution would look like depicted in  FIGS. 3   a  and  b.  For this situation there are more options possible.  FIG. 3   a  shows an integrated splitter on board solution.  FIG. 3   b  shows an integrated splitter on board solution where the multiplexing of the VCSELs output is accomplished by the planar waveguide. 
         [0013]    When integrating the planar splitter on the board one can opt for a planar waveguide device where the splitting of the signal and the multiplexing of the output of the VCSEL arrays is performed in the same waveguide (see  FIG. 3   b ). In that case the splitter has N+1 input ports and N output ports. For N+1 inputs, one port is used to distribute the power to the N output channels. This input is spliced to the feeder cable of the CO. The other N inputs are multiplexed to the output ports and will carry the OTDR pulses from the transmitter array. The N output ports need to be spliced to the distribution cable. 
         [0014]    Description of the Design of the Electronic Board 
         [0015]    The electronic interface consists of four main parts. First of all we have the dedector (or photovoltaic cell) that can consist of one or more series of connected photodiodes. The material system (InP, GaAs or Si) depends on the operating wavelength of the trigger signal sent from the CO. The function of the photodiode stack is twofold. First, power will be provided via the pump wavelength to boot up the circuit or to sufficiently recharge the battery. Then, in a second phase, the power of the pump will be modulated to provide an identification tag which will select which transmitter needs to fire up and generate a pulse for the OTDR trace. Further elements include an ASIC CMOS chip, a rechargeable battery and an optical transmitter bank (preferably consisting out of a VCSEL array). 
         [0016]    The functional blocks of the CMOS chip that control the electronics are depicted in FIG.  4 . b.  It contains a DC/DC regulator which will convert energy from the diode into a suitable voltage to recharge the battery of the module. This can be done by switching (pulse width modulation) the energy stored inside an inductor. The next element of the chip is an optical receiver. This is not a conventional trans-impedance receiver as it should consume minimal power and is required to operate next to the voltage regulator. A possible scheme is to use the state of the voltage regulator itself to sense to the modulation of the pump signal. Indeed, when little light is impinging on the photodiodes, the regulator will switch more slowly than when abundant light is falling on the detectors. It is clear that in this way the data-transfer rate can only be low (smaller than the PMW rate) but high transfer rates are not imperative for the application. Another possibility is the use of an extra dedicated photodiode that is only sensed for receiving the data-signals. 
         [0017]    The signal from the optical receiver is then transferred to a local shift register. The clocking is deduced following an asynchronous serial UART regime (see  FIG. 4 ). This requires an additional local oscillator (crystal to be included on the electronic board). Another possibility for clocking is to synchronize the local clock by receiving alternating one&#39;s and zero&#39;s which are sent at the beginning of each triggering. 
         [0018]    When the shift register is filled up, the content is compared with a predetermined bit-pattern. This bit pattern is used to very whether the communication is really intented for the module. After the receiving of the fixed bit pattern the Finite State Machine (FSM) changes state and the shift register starts now to receive a new pattern which will uniquely identify one of the optical transmitters. The FSM controller then checks if the indicated transmitter number is one of the transmitters for which the module is responsible. If so, it will power up the driver and generate an OTDR pulse on the required channel. The module knows which channels it should respond to since it was pre-programed during fabrication. The data can be either provided via a DIP-switch or via a programmable EEPROM. The μ-controller compares the incoming binary data with a internal memory array which is stored in the μ-controller, so that the μ-controller activates the correct VCSEL in the VCSEL array. 
         [0019]    In  FIG. 4.B . below the principle is illustrated. To power the three building parts the dedector, the μ-controller and the VCSEL array, a lithium ion battery can be used or a rechargeable battery. The battery that can be used is a single cell lithium ion that produces just enough power to drive the three building parts used on the board. The recharging of the battery can be done based on two principles: the first is based on the fact that the μcontroller can function as the Li-ion battery charger. For this approach the principle of a stand alone charging Integrated Circuit (IC) is used, and this is build in an internal charging program that is active within the μ-controller and we use a Mosfet component and a sense line to sense the voltage over the battery. This is already done with a trickle charge system to correctly charge the battery. The second option is that we use external IC, a lithium ion battery charger. This IC uses an external power PMOS device to form a two chip, low cost, low dropout lineair battery charger. the charge current can be set by an external resistor. 
         [0020]    These two principles are further illustrated in FIG.  4 . c.  The recharge of the lithium ion battery is accomplished when there is no signal on the UART of the μ-controller, or we can receive a specific code on the UART that triggers the μ-controller to recharge the lithium ion battery. 
         [0021]    FIG.  5 . a.  shows how monitoring can be done in situation A where the planar splitter is already active in the splitter node. FIG.  5 . b.  shows how monitoring is accomplished in situation B where the planar splitter is not deployed yet and a planar splitter on board solution can be integrated in an outside plant network element. By means of a pump signal that can trigger one particular VCSEL transmitter in a separate device or in an integrated solution on board, the VCSEL sends out a pulse. This signal is back reflected and can be demultiplexed in the Central office and measured by an OTDR. Due to the fact that one particular VCSEL sending a signal to one of the N ONU&#39;s can be triggered, the problem that for conventional OTDR measurements from the central office the OTDR signals after the splitter branch are superimposed is overcome. 
         [0022]    In  FIG. 5(   a ) it is shown that in the Central office ( 1 ) voice and data traffic is multiplexed with video traffic and connected with the feeder cable, that runs to the splitter node where the splitting is done at once (centralised) or can be done over two branches (not shown). An OTDR set up ( 2 ) is placed in the central office and connected to the demultiplexed test signals from the VCSELs that are placed into the field. For situation A as described above the transmitter devices ( 5 ) that remotely can be triggered are spliced into the network. Two options are feasible or N separate devices can be spliced to the splitter output port and the fibers of the distribution cable (grow as you go option). Or a WDM device ( 2 ) is spliced just before the splitter demultiplexing the pump triggering signal. The output ports of the splitter and the demultiplexer port of the WDM can be spliced to the N+1 input ports of the optical pcb board device housing electronic components and the VCSEL array ( 5 ). Upon triggering a VCSEL the back reflections can be measured by the OTDR in the central office. The back reflected signals can provide loss and fault information of the traject from the splitter node to the tap terminal ( 6 ) and the last drop to the subscriber&#39;s residence ( 7 ). In  FIG. 5   b  the greenfield situation is depicted allowing for a connector loss solution in the outside plant. The monitoring procedure is just the same as in FIG.  5 . a.