Advanced Fiber Access Networks

Fiber access networks have advanced significantly in the past several years.  The ITU-T G.984 based G-PON has become the de facto FTTH standard for telcos in the past 10 years.  The debut of the Google Fiber program in 2010 significantly stimulated deployments of Gigabit capable access networks around the world.  New applications such as OTT streaming, AR & VR have also generated new bandwidth and latency requirements in broadband access networks.   Advanced Fiber Access Networks takes a holistic view of end-to-end broadband access networks -from architecture to network technologies and network economies. It reviews the pain points and challenges that broadband service providers face (such as network construction, fiber cable efficiency, transmission challenges, network scalability etc) and how these challenges are tackled by new fiber access transmission technologies, protocols and architecture innovations.  The book covers fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) applications as well as fiber backhauls in other access networks such as 5G wireless and hybrid-fiber-coax (HFC) networks. It has extensive coverage of the network economy, the challenges in fiber network construction and deployment, and how new access architectures and technologies can help to solve these issues. Finally, it examines the scaling issues and bottlenecks in an end-to-end broadband network: from internet backbones to inside the customer home, something rarely covered in books.  For researchers, system and equipment vendors this book offers the insights of where operators' pain points are and how systems should be optimized to solve them. For operators, this book describes the network generation technologies on the horizon and the considerations they should take into account when they evolve their networks.    Both authors are deeply engaged in new technology development, working closely with component and system vendors as well as standard bodies, while working at Google Fiber, the ISP operator. This book reflects the authors’ unique experience.  Describes architectural and traffic characteristics of modern broadband access networks Explains the techno-economic challenges faced by broadband network operators Identifies the scaling bottlenecks (transmission or bandwidth) in end-to-end operator broadband networks Presents the challenges and enabling technologies (photonics and DSP) for implementing next generation fiber access networks Applies SDN and datacenter techniques to build more scalable and cost-effective fiber access networks Compares and contrast broadband fiber vs broadband wireless access networks Presents the latest FTTH standards Describes Content distribution network (CDN) and software defined networks (SDN) and their roles in access networks