2.7.2 EPON PMD Layer
The PMD layer specifies the physical characteristics of the optical trans-
ceivers. Ethernet has the tradition of adopting mature low-cost designs to
promote mass deployments. This philosophy has been the key to the tremendous
commercial successes of Ethernet.
As opposed to the 1:32 splitting ratio used in G-PON, the IEEE 802.3ah
standard specified a minimum splitting ratio of 1:16. It should be realized that
the reconciliation sublayer can support up to 32,768 different logical ONUs
through a 15-bit logical link identifier (LLID).
Two different reaches between the OLT and ONU, 10 km and 20 km, have
been defined in EPON standards [9, Clause 60]. The 1000BASE-PX10-D PMD
and 1000BASE-PX10-U PMD define the OLT and ONU transceiver character- ...