Next-generation ring based self healing WDM-PON architecture with private networking capability and wavelength sharing

There is little argument that today's subscriber access network faces many challenges, and remains a bottleneck in terms of the bandwidth and quality of service it affords to the end-users. While existing broadband access solutions have increased capacity to a few Mb/s for a cable modem or digital subscriber line (DSL) connection, this is still far short of the gigabit line speed necessary to support the evolving rich multimedia and real-time services.;Recent advancements are prompting carriers around the world to consider PON-based Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) systems as possible successor to current solutions. FTTH is the ultimate level of access, allowing end users to access the backbone networks through the gigabit capacity of a fiber optic cable. Among the various PON-based FTTH solutions, single channel Time-Division Multiplexed PON (TDM-PON) and multi-channel Wavelength-Division Multiplexed PON (WDM-PON) architectures are the two most viable candidates. WDM-PON has been positioned as a possible successor and upgrade to TDM-PON-based FTTH implementations.;The transition to FTTH raises a whole range of technical hurdles and complex questions. It is the purpose of this thesis to explore and address some of these challenges and questions, and in the process to capitalize on the key findings to devise a novel, simple and cost effective local access C/WDM-PON-based FTTH architecture that addresses the many challenges on the horizon. The salient features of the proposed architecture is that not only does it addresses the key limitations of today's existing access infrastructure; but also supports most of the crucial features that must be supported by the envisioned next-generation broadband access networks, including simplicity, flexibility, cost-effectiveness, dynamic bandwidth allocation and sharing, guaranteed QoS, private networking capability, and above all survivability.;Specifically, this work proposes and devises a novel self healing ring-based local access C/WDM-PON architecture that efficiently supports dynamic allocation of wavelengths/timeslots and sharing traffic as well as truly direct private connections among PON end users. The proposed architecture combines the salient features of both traditional static WDM-PON (i.e., dedicated connectivity to all subscribers with bit rate and protocol transparencies, guaranteed QoS, and increased security) and dynamic WDM-PON (i.e., efficiently utilizing network resources via dynamic wavelength allocation/sharing among end users).