2012 7th International Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering 20-22 December, 2012, Dhaka, Bangladesh

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Design and Performance Analysis of Centrally Seeded, Long Reach, Cost Optimized Hybrid DWDM TDMA PON
Syed Arbab Mohd Shihab,1,* Mohammad Nasir Uddin,2,#
1,2

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, American International University-Bangladesh Banani, Dhaka-1213, Bangladesh * syedshihab@hotmail.com #nasiruddinaiub@gmail.com (PON) technologies which offers extension of network capacity and reach to support bandwidth intensive applications. Among them, hybrid dense wavelength division multiplexed time division multiple access passive optical network (DWDM-TDMA PON) is the most promising because it breaks previous performance limits in terms of reach, effective splitting ratio and data transmission rate [2]. PONs eliminate active components (e.g. electrically powered switches, routers and interface electronics) and OpticalElectrical-Optical (O-E-O) conversions which lead to cost savings. Excluding the power consumption at the source and receiving end, the power requirement for optical transmission through the passive network is essentially zero which reduces operational expenses. The integration of metro and optical access networks into a single all-optical system to bring down capital and operational expenditure has been successfully demonstrated in previous papers [3]. It is clear that for any network, cost and performance, i.e., bandwidth per user, splitting ratio and maximum reach are the dominant criteria for commercial success [4]. A lot of research is being conducted to optimize the system performance of high speed optical access networks by performing trade-offs between data rate per channel, channel spacing, optical power, and modulation schemes [5]. Multiple channels of WDM systems possessing different optical power levels are usually equalized by means of gain equalizing scheme, which is an integral part of wide band WDM systems [6]. The successful operation of high speed long reach optical network is facilitated by very high stability of wavelength (DFB), high performance dispersion management (DCF) and attenuation compensation techniques (EDFA) [7]. Among all the performance degrading fiber characteristics, linear dispersion provides the biggest challenge to transmission of high speed signals at 1550 nm range [4]. In this paper we report a network based on hybrid DWDM-TDMA technology which minimizes equipment related investments, support coexistence with legacy PONs and can be implemented over a long distance. Attenuation and dispersion is mitigated in our devised model by taking advantage of EDFAs and DCFs respectively. To organize the distribution of optical carriers for upstream burst mode modulation and implement laser-free identical ONUs at user ends, a centralized carrier distribution scheme has been proposed and adopted into the network architecture. From an economical point of view, this approach saves inventory costs which would otherwise have been incurred to store multi-wavelength ONUs. As an increase in length or split ratio deteriorates the signal quality so keeping the split ratio constant, the maximum length of fiber that can be attainable while retaining

AbstractIn this paper, simulation of 8192 way split effect in a 166.1 km long reach hybrid DWDM-TDMA PON employing centrally seeded technique, EAM modulator to provide downstream customer data channels operating at 10Gbit/s, was carried out in Optisystem 10. The upstream channels of capacity 320 Gb/s were simulated in burst-mode and featured low cost Distributed Feedback (DFB) lasers, Single Mode Fiber (SMF), Dispersion Compensating Fiber (DCF), Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA), and Electro absorption modulator (EAM). The DWDM wavelength grid comprises 32, 50 GHz spaced, wavelengths operating in the downstream direction (OLT to ONU) and another 32, 50 GHz spaced, wavelengths carrying data in the upstream direction (ONU to OLT). A central optical carrier distribution scheme is proposed and used to produce all the 32 upstream carriers at the local exchange and distribute them toward the optical network units (ONUs), where each channel serves 256 ONUs. Bidirectional transmission has been reported at 10Gb/s per channel over a 166.1 km-reach hybrid DWDM-TDMA PON using EAM to modulate the optical carrier. The full network supports up to 8192 customers with downstream data rate of 10 Gb/s and variable upstream data rate changes according to the availability of free time slot. Proposed hybrid DWDM-TDMA PON allows integration of metro and optical access networks into a single all-optical system and due to central seed carrier generation this network shows improved transmission distance and acceptable bit error rate. Index Terms passive optical network (PON), DWDM, TDMA, Central carrier distribution.

I. INTRODUCTION The emergence of high end applications requiring unprecedented levels of bandwidth such as multiplayer gaming, e-learning, e-health, e-business, 3D full-HD webcast and high resolution video conferencing, etc have garnered wide popularity from consumers. The capacity of currently deployed PONs has been exhausted by these applications which converge data, voice and video traffic. Over the past several years, both ITU-T and IEEE have introduced successive PON standards which have permitted a migration from ATM based PONs (APONs) or broadband PONs (BPONs) and sub-Gb/s PONs to multi-gigabit PONs (GPONs and XGPONs) featuring 1-2.5 Gb/s to 10 Gb/s optical access networks [1]. In recent times, network operators and investors are looking to restructure and upgrade to or deploy cost effective yet backward compatible, fast, flexible and powerful networks, which have the potential to accommodate bandwidth demands and provide connections over longer distances to users premises. The proliferating use of telecommunication services such as internet coupled with this phenomenal rise in the demand for bandwidth, has given rise to different passive optical network
978-1-4673-1436-7/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE

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acceptable signal quality is simulated for high speed (10 Gb/s) all optical network without any O-E-O conversion.

II. The Basic Principles of WDM-TDMA PON System The convergence of WDM and TDMA PON systems by the start of this decade was envisioned in several previous papers [7], [2]. The exploitation of DWDM technology substantially increases the capacity of optical access networks to accommodate future traffic growth [8]. The ease of operation, efficient sharing of resources and provision for expansion of network is realized by the WDM technology because it offers a high degree of configurability and scalability [9].

multiplexing, propagation through fiber and demultiplexing. Each downstream channel is then paired up with an upstream seed carrier to be routed along the TDMA PONs by passive optical splitters toward the ONUs. At the ONU, information is retrieved from the downstream channel in the receiver while the upstream seed carrier is modulated and sent back in the reverse direction along the TDMA PON. The upstream channels are aggregated, collectively transferred through the metro fiber and finally separated before termination in the receiver array at the service node.

Fig. 2. Simulation setup of DWDM-TDMA PON III. THE 32 CHANNEL, 8192 SPLIT DWDM-TDMA PON SYSTEM Fig. 1. Block diagram of a DWDM-TDMA PON In pure DWDM systems, an optical channel is devoted to each ONU resulting in a large increase in the offered bandwidth per user at the cost of efficient capacity utilization [10]. Fixed channel assignment is inflexible and does not allow dynamic reuse of wavelength. Individual users of a TDM PON share the same upstream channel and are allocated appropriate time slots dynamically according to the service they purchased or rented by exchanging control information between Service Node (SN) and ONUs [5]. The combination of two channel access methods in one network is used to circumvent capacity limitations. PON systems currently in use serve typically 32 ONUs while those reported in recent papers serve several thousand end users [8]. In hybrid DWDM TDMA PONs, data is routed by means of splitting which takes place in multiple stages to obtain efficient use of fiber and a wider geographical reach. The customer capacity is computed by multiplying the number of customers who share the bandwidth resource with the number of wavelengths in each direction. Our designed network services 256 users per TDMA PON using 32 unique upstream and downstream wavelengths, thus boasting a customer capacity of 8192 users. So 8192 users of 32 TDMA PONs are sharing the total bandwidth resource of 320 Gb/s. In the infrequent/unusual event of maximum traffic flow when all users are actively transmitting upstream data, the minimum rate of data transfer comes down to 0.039 Gb/s. The point to multipoint network topology of a basic hybrid PON system can be seen in the block diagram presented in Fig. 1. The service node at the communication companys office handles downstream transmission and upstream reception. The generation of downstream channels by an array of lasers is followed by The proposed local exchange seed carrier based optical access solution is a passive tree topology transporting data to and fro between the service node, local exchange and end users. The designed network has been condensed, as presented in the simulation setup of Fig. 2, to accommodate it within the simulation window while emulating all its essential features. Downstream and upstream data is exchanged between the service node and the local exchange by using two standard single mode fibers optimized for DWDM operation in the Cband. The local exchange exchanges optical data with 32 TDMA PONs, each TDMA PON serving 256 ONUs. Fig. 1 points out the metro section and access section on either side of the local exchange. Two channels are assigned to each TDMA PON to carry downstream and upstream traffic at 10 Gb/s. The achievement of high split and long reach is partly realized by placing EDFAs at various points in the network which sufficiently boost the incoming and outgoing signals to overcome attenuation in the fiber, splitting losses and other OSNR impairments. The ranges of upstream and downstream wavelengths extends from 1530 nm to 1565 nm and are separated by 9 nm guard band to facilitate their separation in the ONU diplexer. These facts are indicated in the Fig. 3. A. Service Node At the service node 32 downstream carriers are produced, modulated, multiplexed and amplified before they are sent off to the local exchange as shown in Fig.1. Given the space constraints of the simulation window, constructing the entire network with all 32 upstream transmitters and another 32 downstream transmitters and 32 TDMA PONs would have been inconvenient to implement. For this purpose, a test bed simulation model has been constructed keeping all essential features in effect. In the service node, the downstream path

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originates at the DWDM transmitter array which assembles 16 DFB lasers outputting optical carriers at a power of 0 dBm (1mW) with a frequency spacing of 100 GHz. To keep the chromatic dispersion and amount of cross talk between the closely spaced channels to a minimum, the narrow line width DFB lasers are the ideal choice. The output power is deliberately kept low to minimize cost and nonlinear impairments [11]. The wavelength of the downstream tunable laser is successively adjusted to lie between these 100 GHz spaced channels to emulate the 50 GHz frequency spacing as specified in the wavelength plan of Fig. 3. For modulation, the optical carrier output is fed straight into the EAM (possessing a modulation index of 0.95) driven by a pseudo random bit sequence (PRBS) generator outputting 10 Gb/s random data sequence having a period of 27-1.Weighing simplicity against cost, a non return-to-zero (level) modulation scheme is chosen to reduce transmitter cost and for its higher bandwidth efficiency and better dispersion tolerance [12].
9nm guard band U1 U32 D1 50 GHz D32

1531.75 1532.9

1542.84

1543.96

1552.2

1553.6

1563.2 1564.32

Upstream

Downstream

Fig. 3.Wavelength range of upstream and downstream channels This is followed by EDFA for amplification. The low operating voltage of EAM brings down power consumption. Furthermore, the provision for their integration with DFB lasers into a single module greatly reduces expense and volume of the device. The use of AWGs for multiplexing and demultiplexing wavelengths is desirable as it offers lower insertion loss (AWGs have typical insertion loss of 5 dB, independent from the number of wavelengths) and simplifies ONUs by eliminating the need for wavelength selective (filter based) receivers [13]. This approach facilitates the use of identical ONUs that simplifies the PON architecture and operation. Both the WDM MUX and DEMUX, playing the role of AWGs are composed of an inexpensive second order Bessel filter having a 3 dB filter bandwidth of 0.2 nm. After combining all the downstream channels into one beam, they are transmitted along the 140 km SMF and another 15 km DCF toward the local exchange. While propagating through the SMF, the optical signals suffer an attenuation of 0.2 dB/km and dispersion of 16 ps/nm/km. Considering the reverse direction of data flow, 32 multiplexed upstream channels heading from their respective TDMA PONs are collectively amplified by a single DWDM EDFA, demultiplexed into separate channels by AWGs before finally terminating at the APDs. The internal photo-electronic signal gain combined with the higher sensitivity, quantum efficiency and faster response times as compared to PIN receivers makes them well suited for this application. The gain and responsivity of APD was fixed at 3 and 8 A/W respectively. ASE noise, shot noise and thermal noise were considered during the simulation. B. Local Exchange Downstream data, travelling through the SMF, is fed into the local exchange. To provide pre and post amplification,

EDFAs are placed on both ends of SMFs in both downstream and upstream paths. The EDFAs were operated in the gain control mode bearing in mind that excess boosting culminates in pronounced fiber nonlinear effects. For computation of loss budget, reduction in optical power due to fiber attenuation, insertion loss of optical components and splitting and scaling up of optical power by optical amplifiers were taken into account. After traversing the 140 km long SMF, the multiplexed channels pass through a small length of DCF featuring a large negative dispersion coefficient (-80 ps/nm/km) which reverses the pulse broadening effect. The downstream channels make a stop at the local exchange where they are first separated by an MUX, then paired up with upstream seed carriers by 2x1 WDM mux and routed to their destined ONUs. An assembly of DFB lasers outputting upstream seed carriers at 2 dBm is housed here in the local exchange instead of service node, thus avoiding attenuation and nonlinear effects along 140 km downstream SMF at the expense of ease of control [14] .The inexistence of the TDMA PONs missing in the simulation setup is covered for by the generation of optical data from these lasers, representing upstream signals coming from TDMA PONs and emulating the practical loading effects of 32 channels on the upstream EDFA. The wavelength of upstream tunable laser was varied 1532.11 nm to 1543.96 nm in steps of 100 GHz and the filter center frequencies adjusted in the middle of the channel bandwidths to observe the performance of different upstream channels. The burst mode operation of upstream channels is brought into effect by two cascaded Mach-Zehnder modulators characterized by an extinction ratio of 30 dB and driven by PRBS generator. The EDFAs in the local exchange, one for each TDMA PON, counteracts the effect of attenuation experienced by the upstream signals as they travel across the fibers of TDMA PONs. All the upstream channels including the upstream test channel are accumulated by a power combiner at the local exchange before feeding them into the SMF toward the service node. C. TDMA-PONs The PON architecture runs on a simple cabling system to avoid fiber congestion while interconnecting the major sections of the network. Cost-sharing of the electronic and optoelectronic devices in the optical line terminal (OLT) brings down the capital expenditure [15]. The local exchange is linked to the ONUs by three separate segments of fibers: 10 km feeder fiber, 1 km distribution fiber and 100 m drop fiber. The fibers are joined together using passive optical splitters. Two successive power splitters (1x8 and 1x4) route the downstream signals to different subscribers of TDMA PONs and combines the upstream signals. The optical attenuators used at both ends of the access link served to emulate the effect of connecting remaining (224 customers) to the TDMA PON system. The deterioration of the optical signal quality and the separation of photons caused by the splitting process impose limitations on the maximum number of splits or branches in a PON tree which in turn limits number of customers [6].In order to successfully retrieve the information from the optical signal and keep the received signal strength above the receiver sensitivity, the number of splits must not exceed 256 in our case. A pair of downstream and upstream wavelengths reaches the ONU where they are separated. The downstream data is decoded by a receiver and the upstream

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carrier is modulated, amplified and sent back to the service node. IV. SIMULATION AND RESULT The bit error rates (BER) and quality factors of both downstream and upstream channels were measured to evaluate their performance. Several simulation runs were carried out with the upstream and downstream tunable lasers set at different wavelengths. BERs in the order of 10-9 or less and corresponding quality factors above 5 were achieved for all the channels without the use of forward error correction (FEC), which falls within the acceptable range. These findings are illustrated graphically in two following figures, one for downstream channels and the other for upstream channels.

performance is more critical, only the eye diagrams of the worst and best performing upstream channels is illustrated in Fig. 6. Comprehensive parametric performance involving eye height, threshold, decision instance, intersymbol interference, jitter and noise have been observed from the eye diagrams and found to be satisfactory. Sufficiently good signal quality of the digital signals at the receiver end can be concluded from an assessment of the eye diagrams of high performing and poor performing channels. II. CONCLUSIONS Judging from the BERs, Q factors and eye diagrams of the channels, the feasibility of our designed hybrid DWDMTDMA PON system can be concluded. Its high transmission length of 166.1 km and large capacity of 8192 users makes it very attractive for PON investors. Further improvement of transmission distance is possible if FEC is employed. In that case the length could have been extended until the BER deteriorated beyond the order of 10-3. Several steps, such as low power DFB lasers, centralized carrier distribution, wavelength independent ONUs, low gain EDFAs, etch were taken to lower the cost of the entire system. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] P. Iannone et al., Bi-Directionally Amplified Extended Reach 40Gb/s CWDM TDM PON with Burst-Mode Upstream Transmission, OSA, Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC),March. 2011. Marilet De Andrade et al.,Evaluating strategies for evolution of passive optical networks, IEEE Commun Mag., pp. 176-184, July. 2011 Peter Ossieur et al.,"Demonstration of a 32 512 Split, 100 km Reach 2 32 10 Gb/s Hybrid DWDM-TDMA PON Using Tunable External Cavity Lasers in the ONUs," Journal of Lightwave Technology, vol. 29, no. 24, Dec. 2011 Klaus Grobe, Jrg-Peter Elbers, PON in Adolescence: From TDMA to WDM-PON, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 2634, Jan. 2008 F. Effenberger et al., An introduction to PON technologies, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 45, no. 3, pp. S17-S25, Mar 2007. Tom Nolle. (May-2008) Working with optical networkings new capabilitiese on Search Telecom white papers. [Online]. Available: http://searchtelecom.techtarget.com/feature/Working-with-opticalnetworkings-new-capabilities#PON Jun-ichi Kani, Naoto Yoshimoto, Next generation PONs: an operator's view, Proc. ECOC 2009 - 35th European Conference on Optical Communication, paper 5.7.4, Sept. 2011. Peter Ossieur et al.,135-km 8192-Split Carrier Distributed DWDMTDMA PON With 2 x 32 x 10 Gb/s Capacity, Journal Of Lightwave Technology, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 463-474, Feb. 2011 Manish Choudhary and Bipin Kumar, Analysis of Next Generation PON Architecture for Optical Broadband Access Networks,. Available from http://hosteddocs.ittoolbox.com/MC120606.pdf S. J. Park, C. H. Lee, K. T. Jeong, H. J. Park, J. G. Ahn, and K. H. Song, Fiber-to-the-Home Services Based on Wavelength-DivisionMultiplexing Passive Optical Network., J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 22, pp. 25822591, Nov. 2004. Ali M. Fard et al.,"Impact of Optical Nonlinearity on Performance of PhotonicTime-Stretch Analog-to-Digital Converter,"Journal Of Lightwave Technology, vol. 29, no. 13, July 2011 Pavlovic, N.B.,Performance comparison of spectrally efficient intensity modulated formats in remodulated WDM PON, International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks, ICTON, 2009. Klaus Grobe, Jrg-Peter Elbers, PON Evolution from TDMA to WDM-PON, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 2634,Jan. 2008 G. Talli and P. D. Townsend, Hybrid DWDM-TDM long-reach PON for next-generation optical access, J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 24, no. 7, pp. 28272834, July. 2006 C. K. Chan , L. K. Chem and C. Lin "WDM PON for next-generation optical broadband access networks", Opto-Electronics Commun. Conf. Proc. OECC, 2006.

Fig. 4. BER and Q factor of downstream channels

Fig. 5. BER and Q factor of upstream channels

[4]

No two channels have the same BER and quality factor. The figures reveal that the channels operating at wavelengths of 1557.85 nm (BER) and 1543.96 nm (BER), possessing the highest BERs of 2.95x10-9 and 9.89 x10-9 among the other channels, are the lowest performing downstream and upstream channel respectively. Conversely, the best performance is obtained from channels with operating wavelengths of 1552.2 nm and 1537.64 nm (BERs).

[5] [6]

[7] [8] [9] [10]

[11]

Fig. 6 Eye diagrams of worst and best performing upstream channel (left to right) Besides measuring BERs to ensure satisfactory link performance, a number of eye diagrams of different channels have also been observed. Upstream seed carriers travel a longer distance, starting from local exchange to ONUs and then back the same path to local exchange and finally to service node, compared to the downstream channels. As a result, they suffer higher insertion losses, fiber attenuation and other nonlinear effects. Since the upstream channel

[12]

[13] [14] [15]