The Escape of Sisyphus or What “Post NG-PON2” Should Do Apart from Neverending Capacity Upgrades

Abstract

The primary design goal of (r)evolutionary NG-PON1&2 was the provisioning of an ever increasing capacity to cope with video-dominated traffic and handle the explosion of mobile data traffic by means of offloading. Recently, however, questions on the future of "post NG-PON2" have surfaced whether to shift its research focus to business and operation related aspects and move access technology into a substantially different direction than continued capacity upgrades. In fact, recent studies indicate that ultimately the major factor limiting the performance of 4G mobile networks is latency rather than capacity of the backhaul. In this paper, we review recently proposed low-latency techniques for NG-PONs that require architectural modifications at the remote node or distribution fiber level and highlight advanced network coding and real-time polling based low-latency techniques that can be implemented in software, enable NG-PONs to carry higher traffic loads and thereby extend their lifetime, and maintain the passive nature of existent optical distribution networks. Furthermore, we elaborate on emerging trends and open challenges for future post NG-PON2 research. To better understand their true potential, we put them into a wider non-technical and historical perspective leading up to a sustainable Third Industrial Revolution (TIR) economy and its underlying Energy Internet.

Advanced Architectures for PON Supporting Fi-Wi Convergence

“…Further, the rapidly increasing use of advance cloud services for storage and processing (either from typical PCs or handheld devices) has further fueled traffic in the access networks. Soon, the explosive growth of access traffic together with the wide usage of real-time services with strict quality of service (QoS) requirements (e.g., low packet delay and jitter, and bandwidth guar-antee) will justify the need of next generation PON standards, such as NG-PON2 and beyond [21].…”

Recent development on time and wavelength-division multiplexed passive optical network (TWDM-PON) for next-generation passive optical network stage 2 (NG-PON2)

“…According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations, such as Japan, Republic of South Korea, Sweden, and the Slovak Republic, FTTH/B is presenting in a good location of application and industrial connection [12]. Passive optical network (PON) research and technology have matured over the last three decades and have established PONs as a cornerstone of today's deep fiber access solutions [13]. It has been widely considered as a preferred technology to implement various FTTX solutions which deliver high bandwidth to the users at low cost and energy per bit.…”

“…This is clear evidence that the NG-PON1 is an enhancement of the current-generation TDM-PON system. The selection of NG-PON1 is a comparison between the technology and the cost, and this choice should take advantage of coexisting with the existing G-PONs technologies on the same optical distribution network (ODN) to minimize the cost construction [26,13].…”

“…Telecommunication operators expert in the field have expected that NG-PON2 would be a highly appropriate system from the commercial deployment perspective. NG-PON2 is an innovation aimed to upgrade the deployed current PONs such as NG-PON1 with no coexistence needed on the same ODN [13]. There are several options for NG-PON2 technology solutions, which are described in the following based on the NG-PON2 requirements.…”

Optical Channel Capacity Upgrade Based on Multiwavelength Conversion XGM Using Semiconductor Optical Amplifier for Access Networks

“…They grew rapidly very close together pushing current systems to upgrade their configurations and standards to cope with these requirements [1][2][3][4][5]. Semiconductor marital has advanced regarding its fabrication process, device design, and applications.…”