LONG-REACH OPTICAL ACCESS NETWORKS (LR-OANS): A PROMISING CANDIDATE FOR FUTURE OPTICAL ACCESS

Abstract

The ever-increasing demand for broader bandwidth per user, which results from the continuous development of new bandwidth-hungry services and applications, creates the motivation to upgrade the currently deployed Time-Division Multiplexing Passive Optical Networks (TDM-PONs) to Next-Generation Optical Access Networks (NG-OANs). Beside the need for more bandwidth per user, a further extension in the range and an increase in the split ratio are highly desirable in PONs. These additional requirements can be achieved by adopting so-called Long-Reach Optical Access Networks (LR-OANs). LR-OANs offer a promising solution that ensures a significant number of users can be supported over a longer range. Moreover, they introduce a cost-effective approach in which both the access and metro segments of the telecommunication network are combined into one backhaul segment, which results in the consolidation of many central offices into one trunk-exchange. This cost-effective approach gave us the motivation to provide a comprehensive survey on the LR-OANs. In this study, we first provide a brief review of different potential technologies, proposed for next-generation optical access. We then provide a review of different stat-of-the-art LR-OAN architectures including opportunities and challenges in each one. A comparison among them based on key network specification is also provided.