Energy-efficient cascaded bit-interleaved converged optical access/in-building network protocol

This paper proposes the cascaded bitinterleaved optical network protocol, an energy-efficient solution aiming at low power consumption in converged optical access/in-building networks while providing high data rates to end users, and a novel network architecture for optical access/in-building networks. In the proposed network architecture, optical-electrical-optical (OEO) regeneration is employed at the interface between access and in-building networks. The downstream frames are generated in the central office using a two-stage bitinterleaving scheme. In the downstream direction, the network nodes only process the data destined for them at a lower clock rate than that of the aggregate passive optical network (PON). In the upstream direction, no word alignment or decoding is performed in the intermediate nodes. Simulation and experimental results show that significant reduction in the power consumption of access/in-building networks can be achieved when the proposed cascaded bit-interleaved protocol is employed in conjunction with the proposed network architecture.