FDMA PON theoretical model and capacity evaluation

In this paper, we present a complete analytical model for a frequency division multiple access passive optical network (FDMA PON) including the assessment of uplink and downlink transmission performance and capacity optimization. The main physical limitations of the system are identified. For the downlink, they are the thermal noise in the photo-detector associated with the nonlinearity of the transmitter modulation transfer function. For the uplink, they are the noise of the semiconductor optical amplifier included in the optical network unit also associated with the nonlinearity of the reflective transmitter. This model predicts, using typical values for the optical and RF parameters, a symmetric capacity of 40 Gbps over a 64 split class B+ PON.