PON measurements and monitoring solutions for FTTH networks during deployment and operation

Abstract

Optical fibre step by step substitutes existing copper cable infrastructure in the carriers' access networks, enabling new broadband services. One common approach, a passive optical network (PON) infrastructure, basically consists of optical fibres and splitters, which are lit up by G-PON (Gigabit/s-PON) or XG-PON (10 Gigabit/s-PON). These systems are attenuation limited, therefore the loss budget of a PON is of high importance. For the deployment process the total attenuation of the PON, between Central Office (CO, OLT) and customer site (ONT), must be accurately monitored and kept below the values specified in G.984.x and G.987.x standards. In FTTH scenarios the PON attenuation measurements must include the in-house networks up to the subscriber fibre cable termination unit. © 2011 IEEE.