Protection switching and local area network emulation in passive optical networks

Abstract

This paper proposes and experimentally demonstrates an automatic-protection-switching (APS) mechanism against distribution fiber breaks in passive optical networks (PONs). The protection of optical-network units (ONUs) that are located at the customer premises is carried out by monitoring the distribution fiber using the traffic that is transported among the customers in the PON. This configuration emulates a local area network (LAN) over the existing PON while facilitating the switching of signal transmissions to a predetermined protection path in an event of a distribution fiber break. As failure detection and APS are performed independently by each ONU in a distributed manner, the process..