First Mile Access Networks and Enabling Technologies

Passive Optical Networking: Problem Formulation

In the preceding section we covered the working of a PON and the main reasons for its nomenclature, the passivity of the medium. We now can digress to outline the main issue in PONs. We have noted and understood the importance of the star topology in passive optical networking and generally also for access networks: the need for connecting a large number of users to a single access point, namely the central office. This leads us to the obvious intuitive solution that a star topology is the best way to create passive optical networking. The passivity in the star-shaped network creates a bus kind of architecture, such that this bus is point to multipoint. This means if the central office (say connected ...