1-Tb/s WDM-OFDM-PON System With Subband Access Scheme and Flexible Subcarrier-Level Bandwidth Allocation

A novel subband access scheme for multiband high-speed orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) passive optical network (PON) is proposed, where the granularity of the bandwidth allocation is as small as the bandwidth of just one subcarrier and the ONUs only receives the desired subcarriers according to the bandwidth allocation strategy from the whole downstream OFDM signal without band limitation. Since the ONUs do not have to receive a complete OFDM band, low-bandwidth and low-speed devices can be used to reduce ONU cost. The algorithm used in the scheme is also explained in detail, and a 1-Tb/s experimental system is successfully established to prove the feasibility of the proposed scheme.