TABLE OF CONTENTS Gerasimos C. Pagiatakis
School for Pedagogical and Technological Education (ASPETE), Greece
In this chapter, a ctive o ptical access networks (AONs) are examined. AONs are a special type of optical access networks in which the sharing of optical fibers among users is implemented by means of active equipment (as opposed to passive optical networks PONs where sharing is achieved by using multiple passive splitters). In active optical access networks, user-side units, known as Optical Network Units (ONUs), are usually grouped in access Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) rings and fiber-interconnected to a local exchange unit, known as Optical Line Termination (OLT). In AONs (as well as in PONs) the optical fiber (originally used in the trunk network) is introduced in the access domain, namely between the customer and the local exchange. Practically, this means that the huge bandwidth provided by the optical fiber becomes directly available to the normal user. Despite the obvious financial and techno-economical issues related to the massive deployment of optical access networks, the possibilities and challenges created are enormous. This chapter examines the various units and modules composing an active optical access network and presents the basic procedures for implementing such a network.
This chapter deals with the active optical access networks, usually referred to as AONs. In this...
