Performance Analysis of Protected Next-Generation Optical Access Networks

This manuscript analyzes the penalty of using different survivable topologies for next-generation PON, taking into account three scenarios: a non-protected topology, a topology with redundancy in the CO hardware and a topology with redundancy in the CO hardware and the feeder optical fiber. For comparing the performance of the aforementioned topologies we obtained, for each scenario, the bit error rate (BER) versus received optical power, using Optsim® optical systems’ simulation software. To achieve accurate results, we employed in our simulation parameters’ values retrieved from real optical components and devices. It were considered in this study two different lengths of ODN: 20 and 40 km. And, to compare the performance of current generation and next-generation PON, the simulations were made for two different bit rates: 10 and 40 Gb/s. Results show that with respect to a non-protected topology, there is almost no penalty in a topology with redundancy for a bit rate of 10 Gb/s. Nonetheless, there is a considerable penalty of using redundancy for a bit rate of 40 Gb/s.