Passive Optical Networks

Yaakov (J) Stein and Zvika Eitan May 2007

Outline

PON benefits PON architecture Fiber optic basics PON physical layer PON user plane PON control plane

PONs

Slide 2

PON benefits

PONs

Slide 3

Why fiber ?
todays high datarate networks are all based on optical fiber the reason is simple (examples for demonstration sake) twisted copper pair(s) 8 Mbps @ 3 km, 1.5 Mbps @ 5.5 km (ADSL) 1 Gb @ 100 meters (802.3ab) microwave 70 Mbps @ 30 km (WiMax) coax 10 Mbps @ 3.6 km (10BROAD36) 30 Mbps @ 30 km (cable modem) optical fiber 10 Mbps @ 2 km (10BASE-FL) 100 Mbps @ 400m (100BASE-FX) 1 Gbps @ 2km (1000BASE-LX) 10 Gbps @ 40 (80) km (10GBASE-E(Z)R) 40 Gbps @ 700 km [Nortel] or 3000 km [Verizon]
PONs Slide 4

Aside why is fiber better ?

attenuation per unit length reasons for energy loss copper: resistance, skin effect, radiation, coupling fiber: internal scattering, imperfect total internal reflection

so fiber beats coax by about 2 orders of magnitude e.g. 10 dB/km for thin coax at 50MHz, 0.15 dB/km l =1550nm fiber

noise ingress and cross-talk

copper couples to all nearby conductors no similar ingress mechanism for fiber

ground-potential, galvanic isolation, lightning protection

copper can be hard to handle and dangerous no concerns for fiber

PONs Slide 5

Why not fiber ?

fiber beats all other technologies for speed and reach but fiber has its own problems

harder to splice, repair, and need to handle carefully

regenerators and even amplifiers are problematic more expensive to deploy than for copper digital processing requires electronics so need to convert back to electronics we will call the converter an optical transceiver optical transceivers are expensive

copper

fiber

switching easier with electronics (but possible with photonics) so pure fiber networks are topologically limited: point-to-point rings
PONs Slide 6

Access network bottleneck

hard for end users to get high datarates because of the access bottleneck local area networks use copper cable get high datarates over short distances core networks use fiber optics get high datarate over long distances small number of active network elements

access

core

access networks (first/last mile) LAN long distances so fiber would be the best choice many network elements and large number of endpoints if fiber is used then need multiple optical transceivers so copper is the best choice this severely limits the datarates
PONs Slide 7

Fiber To The Curb

Hybrid Fiber Coax and VDSL switch/transceiver/miniDSLAM located at curb or in basement need only 2 optical transceivers but not pure optical solution lower BW from transceiver to end users need complex converter in constrained environment

core

feeder fiber

N end users

copper access network

PONs

Slide 8

Fiber To The Premises

we can implement point-to-multipoint topology purely in optics

but we need a fiber (pair) to each end user requires 2 N optical transceivers complex and costly to maintain

core

N end users

access network
PONs Slide 9

An obvious solution
deploy intermediate switches (active) switch located at curb or in basement saves space at central office need 2 N + 2 optical transceivers

core

feeder fiber

N end users

fiber access network

PONs

Slide 10

The PON solution

another alternative - implement point-to-multipoint topology purely in optics avoid costly optic-electronic conversions use passive splitters no power needed, unlimited MTBF only N+1 optical transceivers (minimum possible) ! access network 1:2 passive splitter

core
feeder fiber

N end users typically N=32 max defined 128

1:4 passive splitter

PONs

Slide 11

PON advantages
shared infrastructure translates to lower cost per customer minimal number of optical transceivers feeder fiber and transceiver costs divided by N customers greenfield per-customer cost similar to UTP passive splitters translate to lower cost

can be installed anywhere no power needed essentially unlimited MTBF initially 155 Mbps then 622 Mbps now 1.25 Gbps soon 2.5 Gbps and higher

fiber data-rates can be upgraded as technology improves

PONs

Slide 12

PON
architecture

PONs

Slide 13

Terminology
like every other field, PON technology has its own terminology the CO head-end is called an OLT ONUs are the CPE devices (sometimes called ONTs in ITU) the entire fiber tree (incl. feeder, splitters, distribution fibers) is an ODN all trees emanating from the same OLT form an OAN downstream is from OLT to ONU (upstream is the opposite direction) downstream upstream
NNI
core

Optical Distribution Network

splitter

Optical Network Units

UNI Terminal Equipment
PONs Slide 14

Optical Line Terminal

Optical Access Network

PON types
many types of PONs have been defined

APON
BPON GPON EPON GEPON CPON WPON

ATM PON
Broadband PON Gigabit PON Ethernet PON Gigabit Ethernet PON CDMA PON WDM PON

in this course we will focus on GPON and EPON (including GEPON)

with a touch of BPON thrown in for the flavor

PONs

Slide 15

Bibliography

BPON is explained in ITU-T G.983.x GPON is explained in ITU-T G.984.x EPON is explained in IEEE 802.3-2005 clauses 64 and 65 (but other 802.3 clauses are also needed)

Warning do not believe white papers from vendors especially not with respect to GPON/EPON comparisons

GPON

BPON

EPON

PONs

Slide 16

PON principles
(almost) all PON types obey the same basic principles

OLT and ONU consist of Layer 2 (Ethernet MAC, ATM adapter, etc.) optical transceiver using different ls for transmit and receive

optionally: Wavelength Division Multiplexer

downstream transmission OLT broadcasts data downstream to all ONUs in ODN ONU captures data destined for its address, discards all other data encryption needed to ensure privacy upstream transmission ONUs share bandwidth using Time Division Multiple Access OLT manages the ONU timeslots ranging is performed to determine ONU-OLT propagation time additional functionality Physical Layer OAM Autodiscovery Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation
PONs Slide 17

Why a new protocol ?

downstream upstream

PON has a unique architecture

(broadcast) point-to-multipoint in DS direction (multiple access) multipoint-to-point in US direction

contrast that with, for example

Ethernet - multipoint-to-multipoint ATM - point-to-point

This means that existing protocols do not provide all the needed functionality e.g. receive filtering, ranging, security, BW allocation

PONs

Slide 18

(multi)point - to - (multi)point
Multipoint-to-multipoint Ethernet avoids collisions by CSMA/CD This can't work for multipoint-to-point US PON since ONUs don't see each other And the OLT can't arbitrate without adding a roundtrip time Point-to-point ATM can send data in the open although trusted intermediate switches see all data customer switches only receive their own data This can't work for point-to-multipoint DS PON since all ONUs see all DS data

PONs

Slide 19

PON encapsulation
The majority of PON traffic is Ethernet So EPON enthusiasts say use EPON - it's just Ethernet That's true by definition anything in 802.3 is Ethernet and EPON is defined in clauses 64 and 65 of 802.3-2005 But don't be fooled - all PON methods encapsulate MAC frames EPON and GPON differ in the contents of the header EPON hides the new header inside the GbE preamble GPON can also carry non-Ethernet payloads
PON header DA SA T data FCS
PONs Slide 20

BPON history
1995 : 7 operators (BT, FT, NTT, ) and a few vendors form Full Service Access Network Initiative to provide business customers with multiservice broadband offering Obvious choices were ATM (multiservice) and PON (inexpensive) which when merged became APON 1996 : name changed to BPON to avoid too close association with ATM 1997 : FSAN proposed BPON to ITU SG15 1998 : BPON became G.983 G.982 : PON requirements and definitions G.983.1 : 155 Mbps BPON G.983.2 : management and control interface G.983.3 : WDM for additional services G.983.4 : DBA G.983.5 : enhanced survivability G.983.1 amd 1 : 622 Mbps rate G.983.1 amd 2 : 1244 Mbps rate
PONs Slide 21

EPON history
2001: IEEE 802 LMSC WG accepts

Ethernet in the First Mile Project Authorization Request

becomes EFM task force (largest 802 task force ever formed) EFM task force had 4 tracks

DSL (now in clauses 61, 62, 63) Ethernet OAM (now clause 57) Optics (now in clauses 58, 59, 60, 65) P2MP (now clause 64)

2002 : liaison activity with ITU to agree upon wavelength allocations 2003 : WG ballot 2004 : full standard

2005: new 802.3 version with EFM clauses

PONs Slide 22

GPON history
2001 : FSAN initiated work on extension of BPON to > 1 Gbps
Although GPON is an extension of BPON technology and reuses much of G.983 (e.g. linecode, rates, band-plan, OAM) decision was not to be backward compatible with BPON 2001 : GFP developed (approved 2003) 2003 : GPON became G.984 G.984.1 : GPON general characteristics G.984.2 : Physical Media Dependent layer G.984.3 : Transmission Convergence layer G.984.4 : management and control interface

PONs

Slide 23

Fiber optics - basics

PONs

Slide 24

Total Internal Reflection in Step-Index Multimode Fiber

= sin 1(n2/n1)

t = Propagation Time t Vacuum: n=1,

t=3.336ns/m

V =c/n
t = Ln/c

t Water : n=1.33, t=4.446ns/m

PONs Slide 25

Types of Optical Fiber

Popular Fiber Sizes

Multimode GradedIndex Fiber

Single-mode Fiber

PONs

Slide 26

Optical Loss versus Wavelength

Click to edit Master text styles Second level

Third level

Fourth level

PONs

Slide 27

Sources of Dispersion

Total Dispersion
Multimode Dispersion Chromatic Dispersion

Material Dispersion

PONs

Slide 28

Multimode Dispersion

1 1

Dispersion limits bandwidth in optical fiber

PONs

Slide 29

Graded-index Dispersion

1 1

1 0 1

PONs

Slide 30

Single-Mode Dispersion

1 1

In SM the limit bandwidth is caused by chromatic dispersion.

PONs

Slide 31

System Design Consideration

How to calculate bandwidth?

For a 1.25 Gb/s we need a BW of 0.7 BitRate = 1.143ns

Tc = Dmat * l * L
For Laser 1550nm Fabry Perot

Tc = (20ps/nm * km) * 5nm * 15km = 1.5ns

For Laser 1550nm DFB

Tc = (20ps/nm * km) * 0.2nm * 60km = 0.24ns

PONs Slide 32

Material Dispersion (Dmat)

PONs

Slide 33

Spectral Characteristics

LASER/laser diode: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Done of the wide range of devices that generates light by that principle. Laser light is directional, covers a narrow range of wavelengths, and is more coherent than ordinary light. Semiconductor diode lasers are the standard light sources in fiber optic systems. Lasers emit light by stimulated emission.
PONs Slide 34

Laser Optical Power Output vs. Forward Current

W

Laser

PONs

Slide 35

Light Detectors
PIN DIODES (PD) - Operation simular to LEDs, but in reverse, photon are converted to electrons - Simple, relatively low- cost - Limited in sensitivity and operating range - Used for lower- speed or short distance applications

AVALANCHE PHOTODIODES (APD) - Use more complex design and higher operating voltage than PIN diodes to produce amplification effect

- Significantly more sensitive than PIN diodes

- More complex design increases cost - Used for long-haul/higher bit rate systems
PONs Slide 36

Wavelength-Division Multiplexing

PONs

Slide 37

WDM Duplexing

PONs

Slide 38

Basic Configuration of PON

OLT = Optical Line Termination ONU = Optical Network Unit BMCDR = Burst Mode Clock Data Recovery
PONs Slide 39

Typical PON Configuration and Optical Packets

PONs

Slide 40

Eye diagram of ONU transceiver in burst mode operation

PONs

Slide 41

Burst-Mode Transmitter in ONU

PONs

Slide 42

OLT Burst-Mode Receiver

PONs

Slide 43

Burst-Mode CDR

PONs

Slide 44

Sampling

Ideal sampling instant

Hysteresis

Superimposed interference Ideal, error-free transmission

PONs

Slide 45

Transceiver Block Diagram

PONs

Slide 46

Optical Splitters

PONs

Slide 47

Optical Protection Switch Optical Splitter

PONs

Slide 48

Budget Calculations

LB

= PS - PO

= Link Budget PS = Sensitivity PO = Output Power

LB Example: GPON 1310nm Power: 0dbm Single-mode fiber Sensitivity: -23dbm

Link Budget: 23db

PONs Slide 49

Typical Range Calculation

Assume:

Optical loss = 0.35 db/km

Connector Loss = 2dB Splitter Insertion Loss 1X32 = 17dB Range Budget: ~11Km

PONs

Slide 50

Relationship between transmission distance and number of splits

PONs

Slide 51

GbE Fiber Optic Characteristics

PONs

Slide 52

PON physical layer

PONs

Slide 53

l allocations - G.983.1
Upstream and downstream directions need about the same bandwidth US serves N customers, so it needs N times the BW of each customer but each customer can only transmit 1/N of the time In APON and early BPON work it was decided that 100 nm was needed Where should these bands be placed for best results? In the second and third windows !

Upstream

1260 - 1360 nm (1310 50) second window

Downstream 1480 - 1580 nm (1530 50) third window US

1200 nm 1300 nm 1400 nm

DS
1500 nm 1600 nm
PONs Slide 54

l allocations - G.983.3
Afterwards it became clear that there was a need for additional DS bands Pressing needs were broadcast video and data Where could these new DS bands be placed ? At about the same time G.694.2 defined 20 nm CWDM bands

these were made possible because of new inexpensive hardware (uncooled Distributed Feedback Lasers)
One of the CWDM bands was 1490 10 nm same bottom l as the G.983.1 DS
1270

1490

1630

So it was decided to use this band as the G.983.3 DS and leave the US unchanged
US
1200 nm 1300 nm 1400 nm

DS

guard available 1600 nm

PONs Slide 55

1500 nm

l allocations - final
US
1200 nm 1300 nm 1400 nm

DS
1500 nm 1600 nm

The G.983.3 band-plan was incorporated into GPON and via liaison activity into EPON and is now the universally accepted xPON band-plan

US 1260-1360 nm (1310 50)

DS 1480-1500 nm (1490 10) enhancement bands: video 1550 - 1560 nm (see ITU-T J.185/J.186) digital 1539-1565 nm

PONs

Slide 56

Data rates (for now )

PON BPON Amd 1 Amd 2 DS (Mbps) 155.52 622.08 622.08 1244.16 1244.16 1244.16 1244.16 1244.16 2488.32 2488.32 2488.32 2488.32 1250* 10312.5* US (Mbps) 155.52 155.52 622.08 155.52 622.08 155.52 622.08 1244.16 155.52 622.08 1244.16 2488.32 1250* 10312.5*

GPON

EPON 10GEPON

* only 1G/10G usable due to linecode work in progress

PONs

Slide 57

Reach and splits

Reach and the number of ONUs supported are contradictory design goals In addition to physical reach derived from optical budget there is logical reach limited by protocol concerns (e.g. ranging protocol) and differential reach (distance between nearest and farthest ONUs) The number of ONUs supported depends not only on the number of splits but also on the addressing scheme BPON called for 20 km and 32-64 ONUs GPON allows 64-128 splits and the reach is usually 20 km but there is a low-cost 10 km mode (using Fabry-Perot laser diodes in ONUs) and a long physical reach 60 km mode with 20 km differential reach EPON allows 16-256 splits (originally designed for link budget of 24 dB, but now 30 dB) and has 10 km and 20 km Physical Media Dependent sublayers

PONs

Slide 58

Line codes
BPON and GPON use a simple NRZ linecode (high is 1 and low is 0)

An I.432-style scrambling operation is applied to payload (not to PON overhead)

Preferable to conventional scrambler because no error propagation each standard and each direction use different LFSRs LFSR initialized with all ones LFSR sequence is XOR'ed with data before transmission EPON uses the 802.3z (1000BASE-X) line code - 8B/10B Every 8 data bits are converted into 10 bits before transmission DC removal and timing recovery ensured by mapping Special function codes (e.g. idle, start_of_packet, end_of_packet, etc) However, 1000 Mbps is expanded to 1250 Mbps 10GbE uses a different linecode - 64B/66B

PONs

Slide 59

FEC
G984.3 clause 13 and 802.3-2005 subclause 65.2.3 define an optional G.709-style Reed-Solomon code Use (255,239,8) systematic RS code designed for submarine fiber (G.975) to every 239 data bytes add 16 parity bytes to make 255 byte FEC block Up to 8 byte errors can be corrected Improves power budget by over 3 dB, allowing increased reach or additional splits Use of FEC is negotiated between OLT and ONU Since code is systematic can use in environment where some ONUs do not support FEC In GPON FEC frames are aligned with PON frames In EPON FEC frames are marked using K-codes
(and need 8B10B decode - FEC - 8B10B encode)
PONs Slide 60

More physical layer problems

Near-far problem OLT needs to know signal strength to set decision threshold If large distance between near/far ONUs, then very different attenuations If radically different received signal strength can't use a single threshold EPON: measure received power of ONU at beginning of burst GPON: OLT feedback to ONUs to properly set transmit power Burst laser problem Spontaneous emission noise from nearby ONU lasers causes interference Electrically shut ONU laser off when not transmitting But lasers have long warm-up time and ONU lasers must stabilize quickly after being turned on

PONs

Slide 61

US timing diagram
How does the ONU US transmission appear to the OLT ?

grant
inter-ONU guard

grant
data
laser turn-off laser turn-on lock laser turn-off

data
laser turn-on lock

Notes: GPON - ONU reports turn-on and turn-off times to OLT ONU preamble length set by OLT EPON - long lock time as need to Automatic Gain Control and Clock/Data Recovery long inter-ONU guard due to AGC-reset Ethernet preamble is part of data
PONs Slide 62

PON User plane

PONs

Slide 63

How does it work?

ONU stores client data in large buffers (ingress queues) ONU sends a high-speed burst upon receiving a grant/allocation
Ranging must be performed for ONU to transmit at the right time DBA - OLT allocates BW according to ONU queue levels

OLT identifies ONU traffic by label OLT extracts traffic units and passes to network OLT receives traffic from network and encapsulates into PON frames OLT prefixes with ONU label and broadcasts ONU receives all packets and filters according to label ONU extracts traffic units and passes to client

PONs

Slide 64

Labels
In an ODN there is 1 OLT, but many ONUs ONUs must somehow be labeled for OLT to identify the destination ONU ONU to identify itself as the source EPON assigns a single label Logical Link ID to each ONU (15b) GPON has several levels of labels

ONU_ID (1B) (1B) Transmission-CONTainer (AKA Alloc_ID) (12b) (can be >1 T-CONT per ONU) For ATM mode VPI VC VP VC ONU T-CONT VP VCI VC VC For GEM mode PON Port Port_ID (12b) (12b) ONU T-CONT
Port
PONs Slide 65

DS GPON format
GPON Transmission Convergence frames are always 125 msec long 19440 bytes / frame for 1244.16 rate 38880 bytes / frame for 2488.32 rate Each GTC frame consists of Physical Control Block downstream + payload PCBd contains sync, OAM, DBA info, etc. payload may have ATM and GEM partitions (either one or both) GTC frame
PCBd payload PCBd
scrambled

125 msec
PCBd payload

payload

PSync (4B)

Ident (4B)

PLOAMd (13B)

BIP (1B)

ATM partition

GEM partition

PLend (4B) PLend (4B)

US BW map (N*8B)
PONs Slide 66

GPON payloads
GTC payload potentially has 2 sections: ATM partition (Alen * 53 bytes in length) GEM partition (now preferred method) PCBd ATM cell ATM cell ATM cell GEM frame GEM frame ATM partition

GEM frame

Alen (12 bits) is specified in the PCBd Alen specifies the number of 53B cells in the ATM partition if Alen=0 then no ATM partition if Alen=payload length / 53 then no GEM partition ATM cells are aligned to GTC frame ONUs accept ATM cells based on VPI in ATM header GEM partition Unlike ATM cells, GEM delineated frames may have any length Any number of GEM frames may be contained in the GEM partition ONUs accept GEM frames based on 12b Port-ID in GEM header
PONs Slide 67

GPON Encapsulation Mode

A common complaint against BPON was inefficiency due to ATM cell tax
GEM is similar to ATM constant-size HEC-protected header but avoids large overhead by allowing variable length frames GEM is generic any packet type (and even TDM) supported GEM supports fragmentation and reassembly GEM is based on GFP, and the header contains the following fields: Payload Length Indicator - payload length in Bytes Port ID - identifies the target ONU Payload Type Indicator (GEM OAM, congestion/fragmentation indication) Header Error Correction field (BCH(39,12,2) code+ 1b even parity) The GEM header is XOR'ed with B6AB31E055 before transmission
PLI (12b) Port ID (12b)
5B

PTI (3b)

HEC (13b)

payload fragment (L Bytes)

PONs Slide 68

Ethernet / TDM over GEM

When transporting Ethernet traffic over GEM: only MAC frame is encapsulated (no preamble, SFD, EFD) MAC frame may be fragmented (see next slide)
Ethernet over GEM PLI ID PTI HEC DA SA T data FCS

When transporting TDM traffic over GEM: TDM input buffer polled every 125 msec. PLI bytes of TDM are inserted into payload field length of TDM fragment may vary by 1 Byte due to frequency offset round-trip latency bounded by 3 msec.
TDM over GEM PLI ID PTI HEC PLI Bytes of TDM

PONs

Slide 69

GEM fragmentation
GEM can fragment its payload

For example
unfragmented Ethernet frame PLI ID PTI=001 HEC DA SA T data FCS fragmented Ethernet frame

PLI PLI

ID ID

PTI=000 HEC DA PTI=001 HEC

SA data2

data1 FCS

GEM fragments payloads for either of two reasons:

GEM frame may not straddle GTC frame PCBd ATM partition GEM frame GEM frag 1 PCBd ATM partition

GEM frag 2

GEM frame

GEM frame may be pre-empted for delay-sensitive data PCBd ATM partition urgent frame large frag 1 PCBd ATM partition urgent frame

large frag 2

PONs

Slide 70

PCBd
We saw that the PCBd is
PSync
(4B) B6AB31E0

Ident
(4B)

PLOAMd
(13B)

BIP
(1B)

PLend
(4B)

PLend
(4B)

US BW map
(N*8B)

PSync - fixed pattern used by ONU to located start of GTC frame Ident - MSB indicates if FEC is used, 30 LSBs are superframe counter PLOAMd - carries OAM, ranging, alerts, activation messages, etc. BIP - SONET/SDH-style Bit Interleaved Parity of all bytes since last BIP

PLend (transmitted twice for robustness) Blen - 12 MSB are length of BW map in units of 8 Bytes Alen - Next 12 bits are length of ATM partition in cells CRC - final 8 bits are CRC over Blen and Alen US BW map - array of Blen 8B structures granting BW to US flow will discuss later (DBA)
PONs Slide 71

GPON US considerations
GTC fames are still 125 msec long, but shared amongst ONUs Each ONU transmits a burst of data using timing acquired by locking onto OLT signal according to time allocation sent by OLT in BWmap there may be multiple allocations to single ONU OLT computes DBA by monitoring traffic status (buffers) of ONUs and knowing priorities at power level requested by OLT (3 levels) this enables OLT to use avalanche photodiodes which are sensitive to high power bursts leaving a guard time from previous ONU's transmission prefixing a preamble to enable OLT to acquire power and phase identifying itself (ONU-ID) in addition to traffic IDs (VPI, Port-ID) scrambling data (but not preamble/delimiter)
PONs Slide 72

US GPON format
4 different US overhead types:

Physical Layer Overhead upstream always sent by ONU when taking over from another ONU contains preamble and delimiter (lengths set by OLT in PLOAMd) BIP (1B), ONU-ID (1B), and Indication of real-time status (1B) PLOAM upstream (13B) - messaging with PLOAMd
Power Levelling Sequence upstream (120B) used during power-set and power-change to help set ONU power so that OLT sees similar power from all ONUs

Dynamic Bandwidth Report upstream sends traffic status to OLT in order to enable DBA computation

if all OH types are present:

PLOu PLOAMd PLSu DBRu payload

PONs

Slide 73

US allocation example
DS frame PCBd payload

BWmap

Alloc-ID SStart SStop Alloc-ID SStart Sstop Alloc-ID SStart SStop

US frame

preamble + delimiter

guard time

scrambled

BWmap sent by OLT to ONUs is a list of ONU allocation IDs flags (not shown above) tell if use FEC, which US OHs to use, etc. start and stop times (16b fields, in Bytes from beginning of US frame)
PONs Slide 74

EPON format
EPON operation is based on the Ethernet MAC

and EPON frames are based on GbE frames

but extensions are needed

clause 64 - MultiPoint Control Protocol PDUs this is the control protocol implementing the required logic clause 65 - point-to-point emulation (reconciliation) this makes the EPON look like a point-to-point link

and EPON MACs have some special constraints

instead of CSMA/CD they transmit when granted time through MAC stack must be constant ( 16 bit durations) accurate local time must be maintained
PONs Slide 75

EPON header
Standard Ethernet starts with an essentially content-free 8B preamble 7B of alternating ones and zeros 10101010 1B of SFD 10101011 In order to hide the new PON header EPON overwrites some of the preamble bytes
10101010 10101010 10101010 10101010 10101010 10101010 10101010 10101011

10101010

10101010

10101011

10101010

10101010

LLID

LLID

CRC

LLID field contains MODE (1b) always 0 for ONU 0 for OLT unicast, 1 for OLT multicast/broadcast actual Logical Link ID (15b) Identifies registered ONUs 7FFF for broadcast CRC protects from SLD (byte 3) through LLID (byte 7)
PONs Slide 76

MPC PDU format

MultiPoint Control Protocol frames are untagged MAC frames with the same format as PAUSE frames
DA SA L/T Opcode timestamp data / RES / pad FCS

Ethertype = 8808 Opcodes (2B) - presently defined: GATE/REPORT/REGISTER_REQ/REGISTER/REGISTER_ACK Timestamp is 32b, 16 ns resolution conveys the sender's time at time of MPCPDU transmission Data field is needed for some messages

PONs

Slide 77

Security
DS traffic is broadcast to all ONUs, so encryption is essential
easy for a malicious user to reprogram ONU to capture desired frames

US traffic not seen by other ONUs, so encryption is not needed

do not take fiber-tappers into account

EPON does not provide any standard encryption method can supplement with IPsec or MACsec many vendors have added proprietary AES-based mechanisms
in China special China Telecom encryption algorithm

BPON used a mechanism called churning

Churning was a low cost hardware solution (24b key) with several security flaws engine was linear - simple known-text attack 24b key turned out to be derivable in 512 tries So G.983.3 added AES support - now used in GPON
PONs Slide 78

GPON encryption
OLT encrypts using AES-128 in counter mode

Only payload is encrypted (not ATM or GEM headers)

Encryption blocks aligned to GTC frame Counter is shared by OLT and all ONUs
46b = 16b intra-frame + 30 bits inter-frame intra-frame counter increments every 4 data bytes reset to zero at beginning of DS GTC frame

OLT and each ONU must agree on a unique symmetric key OLT asks ONU for a password (in PLOAMd) ONU sends password US in the clear (in PLOAMu) key sent 3 times for robustness OLT informs ONU of precise time to start using new key

PONs

Slide 79

QoS - EPON
Many PON applications require high QoS (e.g. IPTV) EPON leaves QoS to higher layers
VLAN tags P bits or DiffServ DSCP

In addition, there is a crucial difference between LLID and Port-ID

there is always 1 LLID per ONU there is 1 Port-ID per input port - there may be many per ONU this makes port-based QoS simple to implement at PON layer

RT

EF

BE

GPON

PONs

Slide 80

QoS - GPON
GPON treats QoS explicitly
constant length frames facilitate QoS for time-sensitive applications 5 types of Transmission CONTainers type 1 - fixed BW type 2 - assured BW type 3 - allocated BW + non-assured BW type 4 - best effort type 5 - superset of all of the above

GEM adds several PON-layer QoS features

fragmentation enables pre-emption of large low-priority frames PLI - explicit packet length can be used by queuing algorithms PTI bits carry congestion indications

PONs

Slide 81

PON control plane

PONs

Slide 82

Principles
GPON uses PLOAMd and PLOAMu as control channel PLOAM are incorporated in regular (data-carrying) frames

Standard ITU control mechanism

EPON uses MPCP PDUs

Standard IEEE control mechanism

EPON control model - OLT is master, ONU is slave OLT sends GATE PDUs DS to ONU ONU sends REPORT PDUs US to OLT

PONs

Slide 83

Ranging

Upstream traffic is TDMA

Were all ONUs equidistant, and were all to have a common clock then each would simply transmit in its assigned timeslot
But otherwise the signals will overlap To eliminate overlap

guard times left between timeslots each ONU transmits with the proper delay to avoid overlap delay computed during a ranging process
PONs Slide 84

Ranging background
In order for the ONU to transmit at the correct time the delay between ONU transmission and OLT reception needs to be known (explicitly or implicitly) Need to assign an equalization-delay
The more accurately it is known the smaller the guard time that needs to be left and thus the higher the efficiency Assumptions behind the ranging methods used:

can not assume US delay is equal to DS delay delays are not constant due to temperature changes and component aging GPON: ONUs not time synchronized accurately enough
EPON: ONUs are accurately time synchronized (std contains jitter masks) with time offset by OLT-ONU propagation time
PONs Slide 85

GPON ranging method

Two types of ranging initial ranging only performed at ONU boot-up or upon ONU discovery must be performed before ONU transmits first time continuous ranging performed continuously to compensate for delay changes OLT initiates coarse ranging by stopping allocations to all other ONUs thus when new ONU transmits, it will be in the clear OLT instructs the new ONU to transmit (via PLOAMd) OLT measures phase of ONU burst in GTC frame

OLT sends equalization delay to ONU (in PLOAMd)

During normal operation OLT monitors ONU burst phase If drift is detected OLT sends new equalization delay to ONU (in PLOAMd)

PONs

Slide 86

EPON ranging method

All ONUs are synchronized to absolute time (wall-clock) When an ONU receives an MPCPDU from OLT it sets its clock according to the OLT's timestamp When the OLT receives an MPCPDU in response to its MPCPDU it computes a "round-trip time" RTT (without handling times) it informs the ONU of RTT, which is used to compute transmit delay
OLT sends MPCPDU ONU receives MPCPDU Timestamp = T0 Sets clock to T0 ONU sends MPCPDU Timestamp = T1 OLT receives MPCPDU RTT = T2 - T1

time

OLT time ONU time

T0
T0 T1

T2

RTT = (T2-T0) - (T1-T0) = T2-T1

OLT compensates all grants by RTT before sending Either ONU or OLT can detect that timestamp drift exceeds threshold

PONs

Slide 87

Autodiscovery
OLT needs to know with which ONUs it is communicating
This can be established via NMS but even then need to setup physical layer parameters PONs employ autodiscovery mechanism to automate discovery of existence of ONU acquisition of identity allocation of identifier acquisition of ONU capabilities measure physical layer parameters agree on parameters (e.g. watchdog timers)

Autodiscovery procedures are complex (and uninteresting) so we will only mention highlights

PONs

Slide 88

GPON autodiscovery
Every ONU has an 8B serial number (4B vendor code + 4B SN) SN of ONUs in OAN may be configured by NMS, or SN may be learnt from ONU in discovery phase ONU activation may be triggered by Operator command Periodic polling by OLT OLT searching for previously operational ONU G.984.3 differentiates between three cases: cold PON / cold ONU warm PON / cold ONU warm PON / warm ONU Main steps in procedure: ONU sets power based on DS message OLT sends a Serial_Number request to all unregistered ONUs ONU responds OLT assigns 1B ONU-ID and sends to ONU ranging is performed ONU is operational
PONs Slide 89

EPON autodiscovery
OLT periodically transmits DISCOVERY GATE messages ONU waits for DISCOVERY GATE to be broadcast by OLT DISCOVERY GATE message defines discovery window start time and duration ONU transmits REGISTER_REQ PDU using random offset in window OLT receives request registers ONU assigns LLID bonds MAC to LLID performs ranging computation OLT sends REGISTER to ONU

OLT sends standard GATE to ONU ONU responds with REGISTER_ACK ONU goes into operational mode - waits for grants
PONs Slide 90

Failure recovery
PONs must be able to handle various failure states

GPON
if ONU detects LOS or LOF it goes into POPUP state it stops sending traffic US OLT detects LOS for ONU if there is a pre-ranged backup fiber then switch-over EPON during normal operation ONU REPORTs reset OLT's watchdog timer similarly, OLT must send GATES periodically (even if empty ones) if OLT's watchdog timer for ONU times out ONU is deregistered

PONs

Slide 91

Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation

MANs and WANs have relatively stationary BW requirements due to aggregation of large number of sources But each ONU in a PON may serve only 1 or a small number of users So BW required is highly variable

It would be inefficient to statically assign the same BW to each ONU

So PONs assign dynamically BW according to need The need can be discovered by passively observing the traffic from the ONU by ONU sending reports as to state of its ingress queues The goals of a Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation algorithm are maximum fiber BW utilization fairness and respect of priority minimum delay introduced

PONs

Slide 92

GPON DBA
DBA is at the T-CONT level, not port or VC/VP

GPON can use traffic monitoring (passive) or status reporting (active)

There are three different status reporting methods

status in PLOu - one bit for each T-CONT type piggy-back reports in DBRu - 3 different formats: quantity of data waiting in buffers, separation of data with peak and sustained rate tokens nonlinear coding of data according to T-CONT type and tokens ONU report in DBA payload - select T-CONT states

OLT may use any DBA algorithm OLT sends allocations in US BW map

PONs

Slide 93

EPON DBA
OLT sends GATE messages to ONUs GATE message
DA SA 8808 Opcode=0002 timestamp Ngrants/flags grants

flags include DISCOVERY and Force_Report Force_Report tells the ONU to issue a report

REPORT message
DA SA 8808 Opcode=0003 timestamp Nqueue_sets Reports

Reports represent the length of each queue at time of report OLT may use any algorithm to decide how to send the following grants

PONs

Slide 94