Receiver Signal Processing for 50Gbit/s Passive Optical Networks

Increasing bandwidth requirements for home and business Internet connections as well as fiber links for 5G wireless drive the need for higher data rate passive optical networks (PON). PON is a cost-effective way to deploy fiber. A point-to-multipoint topology with passive optical splitters is used to connect many subscribers to one central node. The next development step in PON is 50 Gbit/s per wavelength, which requires improvements in error correction coding and receiver signal processing. This paper investigates digital equalization for PON with respect to performance with soft decision error correction decoding.