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Background

The need for higher speed is a never ceasing requirement for broadband access and requirement of 1 Gbps is expected around 2016. While currently deployed xDSL technologies are still evolving, fibre-based access and WDM-PON will be an important technology to satisfy these bandwidth requirements. Today's VDSL2 standard today provides up to 100Mbps, but the capacity of the copper lines are dropping rapidly with copper length and is dependant on copper quality Considering the capacity required only for watching one channel of HDTV is 20 Mbps, fibre technology needs to be rolled out closer to the customer, either as Fibre To The Home (FTTH) or as Fibre To The Curb (FTTC) as an intermediate solution.

According to “FTTH Worldwide Market & Technology Forecast, 2006-2011” published by Heavy Reading, USA, the total number of homes connected to fibres will grow from about 11 million at the end of 2006 to about 86 million at the end of 2011, dominated by Asia with 59 million household connected.

Summary and objectives

Our idea is to develop and implement WDM-PON as the new future proof FTTH technology to satisfy the coming BW requirements with a point to point architecture. The aim is to develop application specific optical components of a WDM-PON broadband access network.

We target a system cost per subscriber below today’s implementation of GPON by develop innovative new low cost components with high level of integration in addition to new manufacturing processes. Today, even the cheapest WDM-PON solution cost 2 -3 times as much as GPON. Up to 95% of the cost of optical components is due to packaging. The project aims to develop a system with an integration scale that is around 100 times higher than State of the Art that can be implemented as an upgrade of xPON systems that are currently being installed, and will not require changes or re-routing of optical fibres.

Type of funding scheme

FP7-ICT-2007-2 Small or medium-scale focused research project (STREP)

Work programme topics addressed

Objective ICT-2007.3.5: Photonic components and subsystems

Timeline

Start Date: 01 April 2008

End Date: 31 March 2011

Budget

Overall Cost: 9,120,400 €

Funding: 3,000,000 €