Light Counting, an authoritative analyst in the communications industry, released the industry report (white paper) titled "Digitization of optical distribution network (ODN) for PON".

Figure 1:

The report first reviews the evolution and development of FBB (Fixed broadband) technologies in different transmission media, and reaffirms that FTTH is the mainstream FBB solution. As the most important part of FTTH, ODN (Optical distribution network) has emerged with many exciting innovations in recent years.

The white paper pioneered the definition of generational ODN technology. According to LightCounting, the development of ODN technology has gone through three generations. The first-generation ODN (traditional ODN) relied on a large number of fiber splices, which has low construction efficiency and high requirements on workers' skills and complex tools. Since 2015, the second-generation ODN has been deployed. The typical ODN2 solution such as those developed by Huawei, Corning, and CommScope uses pre-connectorized elements, so that splicing is not required at sites. All fiber fusion-splicing and testing are already completed in the factory and packaged in boxes. This means that technicians can complete the installation simply by plug and play during site deployment, greatly improving greatly improving the deployment efficiency and the engineering quality of the site. ETSI released the TR 103 775 standard in August 2021. This ODN solution is also called the QuickODN solution in the industry.

The white paper focuses on the latest third-generation ODN technologies and solutions (ODN3). Optical fibers do not conduct electricity. Therefore, ODNs are passive networks. Although the installation efficiency of the second generation ODNs is greatly improved, the digitalization and automation of ODN networks have not made any obvious progress in the past decade. In recent years, some imaginative digital ODN solutions have emerged, enabling ODN to become digital and intelligent.

The white paper introduces the latest digital ODN solutions from ADTRAN-ADVA, COMMSCOPE, NOKIA, VIAVI, ZTE, and Huawei. The mainstream digital ODN technologies are based on the OTDR technology to implement ODN optical path scanning and fault diagnosis. At the end of the report, LightCounting highlights the star solution of 2022, Huawei's "Fiber Iris" solution.

Different from other OTDR solutions, Huawei' s Fiber Iris cleverly uses optical micro-structures in the 1xN splitter of the ODN to introduce unique differential phase changes in the upstream signal. Fiber Iris solution consists of a cloud management platform (Huawei called NCE), OAI (phase receiver) boards, OSU (combiner), and Fiber Iris Splitter. This solution is claimed to automatically detect network faults and accurately locate fault points with a precision of 2 meters. In addition, the optical cable link status can be automatically detected.

Figure 2:

The emergence of the third-generation ODN (ODN3) injects vitality into the ODN industry and increases the imagination of FBB fiber access in competition with MBB 5G/6G technologies. More amazing optical fiber intelligence technologies may emerge in the future, driving the informatization, digitalization, and automation of human society. Let's wait and see.

For original report: https://www.lightcounting.com/resource/25/resourceFile/Optical%20Distribution%20Network%20evolution_24Feb2023.pdf

This content is sponsored by Huawei.