A broadband integrated services network architecture based on DWDM

The broadband integrated service network (B-ISDN) had been considered as one of the leading network architectures of fiber to the home for delivering integrated services for a quite long period of time. However, with the development of the dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technology, large number of channels of lights with different wavelengths are used to transmit data within one single fiber. This increases the bandwidth capacity of a single fiber by tens or even hundreds of times. DWDM has been deployed for long-haul transmissions and will surely change the landscape of fiber-to-the-home network architecture and protocols. Utilizing the bandwidth capability of DWDM to deliver broadband integrated services to homes is an important area of research. This paper presents a virtual star network architecture based on the very high channel count DWDM (VHCC-DWDM) framework, which uses the wavelength channels within one fiber to link the users with the service providers or the edge routers of the Internet. The paper discusses the network architectural issues, which include the network topology, the very high channel count DWDM, the wideband-low-loss fiber for access networks, and the user premises. The paper starts with an overview of the DWDM based residential access networks which have been developed in the literature.