Huawei unveils TWDM PON system prototype

Huawei says it will show off a second generation TWDM-PON prototype system at this week’s FTTH Conference Europe event in Stockholm, Sweden.

The company describes its “Mark II” prototype as an example of how TWDM-PON will support 40 or 80 Gbps capacity based on stacked XG-PONs via either four (for 40G) or eight wavelengths (for 80G). Huawei notes that TWDM-PON systems enables reuse of existing optical distribution networks (ODNs) to support backward compatibility for a smooth migration to higher speeds in fiber-optic broadband access networks.

The prototype features Huawei’s approach to key building blocks of TWDM-PON systems, including colorless ONU transceiver modules, OLT integrated transceiver modules, and multi-wavelength management and control protocol. For example, the transmitter wavelength and receiver wavelength of the ONU transceiver are both tunable. The Huawei system uses G.multi protocol as the ONU wavelength management and control scheme to create what it asserts is “a truly unified PON system” rather than just an assemblage of stacked XG-PONs. Huawei described the system’s design in a post-deadline paper at ECOC 2013 entitled, “World's First Demonstration of Pluggable Optical Transceiver Modules for Flexible TWDM-PONs.”

"In the Mark II prototype, Huawei is the first in the whole industry innovatively solving the key issues like tunable SFP+ transceiver for ONUs, integrated transceiver for OLT, ONU wavelength control and management, etc. It will become one of the milestones of TWDM-PON in the way of final commercialization,” asserted Dr. Frank Effenberger, Huawei’s chief expert in access networks.

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