From 25 Gb/s to 50 Gb/s TDM PON: transceiver architectures, their performance, standardization aspects, and cost modeling
Ed Harstead, R. Bonk, S. Walklin, Dora van Veen, Vincent Houtsma, Noriaki Kaneda, Amitkumar Mahadevan, Robert Borkowski
Abstract
Standardization activities are nearly complete for single wavelength 25 Gb/s time-division multiplexed (TDM) passive optical networks (PONs) and well underway for 50 Gb/s TDM PONs. There is considerable debate in the industry about which technology will be the “next step” after 10 Gb/s TDM PON, now finally starting to ramp up to mass deployment. 50 Gb/s PON clearly brings a <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> </mml:math> bandwidth advantage over 25 Gb/s, at least in the downstream direction. On the other hand, the increase of speed to 50 Gb/s brings with it a substantial receiver sensitivity penalty of at least 4 dB, which has a chain effect on transceiver architecture, cost, and time-to-market. In this paper, each of those elements is investigated, quantified, and compared to 25 Gb/s.