On The Evolution of PON-Based FTTH Solutions

Passive Optical Network (PON)-based Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) are promising solutions that can break through the economic barrier of traditional point-to-point solutions. Once fibers are deployed with PON-based FTTH solutions, it becomes critical how to migrate to Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM)-PON because Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) used in current PON solutions cannot exploit the huge bandwidth of the optical fibers and therefore will not be able to meet ever-increasing demands for higher bandwidth by future network applications. In this paper we review and compare the current PON-based FTTH solutions, ATM-PON (APON) and Ethernet PON (EPON), and provide a possible evolution scenario to future WDM-PON.