GPON-technology is currently the most modern, efficient and promising in a fairly extensive family of passive fiber-optic networks. Based on European standards that have been in force in recent years, it provides cable operators and Internet service providers with effective solutions in the field of high-speed access to the World Wide Web, stable signal and exceptional picture quality. GPON technology also provides very significant savings in optical fiber, thanks to the tree topology of the network architecture, and the highest reliability achieved through passive branching elements. But perhaps the main advantage of this telecommunication innovation lies in its high-speed “last mile”.
GPON-technology supports the modern wave multiplexing technique, which allows to significantly increase network bandwidth without upgrading their cable infrastructure. And the tree topology offers great opportunities for flexible management of the bandwidth of client services. At the same time, GPON technology has a fairly high data transfer rate, which ensures transport transparency for a wide variety of services: SDH, Ethernet, ATM, etc.
Thus, the numerous advantages of passive fiber-optic networks and a number of their unique capabilities determine the advantages of this technology over other telecommunication architectures, especially with regard to the high-speed “last mile”. This explains the rapid spread of this innovation in the construction of high-speed fiber-optic urban multi-service networks. What is GPON technology, and what is its essence?
In itself, it is simple, like all ingenious. The central site of the provider, which provides high-speed trunk connection, is connected to subscriber points with a passive optical network of tree architecture. In this case, special intermediate nodes are created on which compact passive splitters (splitters) of the optical type are located. Their passivity means that they absolutely do not need food or service.
GPON equipment, in addition to splitters, includes a multiservice hardware-software station platform and subscriber terminals. Moreover, one platform can transmit information to such a number of subscriber devices, which allows you to connect to it a power budget and the speed of transceiver hardware. The combination of such modern equipment allows you to quickly deploy passive fiber optic networks and upgrade cable architectures in the shortest possible time and without extra costs.
Interestingly, passive fiber optic networks are by no means an invention of the days of current systems. The development of this data transfer technology began in the eighties in the bowels of British Telecom laboratories. A few years after the start of development, the first test trials were carried out, in which many well-known European television companies took part. In the future, this technology went through many stages of improvement and modernization. The first passive networks of this type had a throughput of only 155 Mbps. However, at that time it was enough. And only now, in connection with the rapid progress of the Internet and digital television, this technology turned out to be truly in demand.