A novel WDM-based optical access network with high energy efficiency using Elastic OLT

This paper presents a novel access network architecture that includes the concept of ¿Elastic OLT¿ with a view to saving power. This architecture saves power by adapting to the physical rate of the signal. The adaptation policy is based on the full utilization of the power budget, which increases as the physical rate decreases. Making full use of the power budget is based on the idea that surplus power budget constitutes a waste of power. The surplus power budget is exhausted by extending the transmission distance and increasing the splitting ratio, which are both realized by Elastic OLT. Calculation and design for determining the optimal network parameters are performed. The results confirm the validity of the proposed method.