Fibre to the residential customer

An optical access link configuration for residential customers, developed within the RACE ACCESS project R1030, is presented. It is designed to initially deliver narrowband interactive services, such as POTS (plain old telephone service) and/or ISDN and distributive TV (CATV). A PON is used to connect each of the 32 customers with two fibers, one for each service category. At least 40 channels of TV are transmitted in the AM-VSB format, which requires an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) per 16 customers. A hybrid modulation scheme has been adopted for the interactive channel, combining the best of both TDM (time-division multiplexing) and SCM (subcarrier multiplexing). A system prototype was built and evaluated. >