Optical Networking Best Practices Handbook

Chapter 6. Passive Optical Components

Requirements for passive optical communication components vary with the optical networks in which they are deployed. Optical network topologies include ultra-long-haul, long-haul, metro core, metro access, enterprise, and residential networks:

• Ultra-long-haul networks refer to point-to-point transport networks that send signals across several thousand kilometers without electrical signal regeneration, typically using either Raman amplification or solitons.

• Long-haul networks are the conventional long distance point-to-point transport networks that can send signals across 1000 km before the need for regeneration.

• Metro core networks refer to metropolitan area core ring and mesh networks that are typically hundreds of kilometers in length and either do not use amplification or use it sparingly.

• Metro access networks are the metropolitan area access ring networks, with stretches of a few to tens of kilometers; for distances this short, amplification is not needed.

• Enterprise networks refer to the intracampus or intrabuilding networks where distances are typically <1 km.

• Residential networks refer to the infrastructure needed to bring the fiber to the home; these types of networks are deployed scarcely today; however, when their build-out accelerates, there will be need for massive amounts of hardware [1].

The distances, use or non-use of amplification, and volume of hardware needed have direct consequences on the types of passive optical components ...