Energy-efficient next-generation optical access networks

Energy efficiency has become an increasingly important aspect of network design, due to both the increasing operational costs related to energy consumption and the increasing awareness of global warming and climate change. This article addresses the energy consumption of different next-generation optical access solutions beyond 10G TDM PONs. It is assumed that next-generation optical access should be able to provide sustainable data rates up to 1 Gb/s per subscriber with a passive fan-out of at least 1:64. Promising system candidates that meet these criteria are compared and analyzed in terms of energy consumption. Candidate PON solutions are also compared to architectures based on point-to-point fiber. A systematic approach is developed for the energy consumption comparison. The analysis is based on estimates of power consumption for key components in next-generation systems. Among the considered candidates, we find that WDM-PON based on RSOA, stacked 10G TDM-PON, and point-to-point fiber offer the lowest power per line potential.