Experimental evaluation of a NG-PON2 network

The next generation passive optical network, stage 2 (NG-PON2) constitute milestone in the optical access networks evolution. Currently the requirements of its physical layer, such as a 40 Gb/s of upstream/downstream capacity, using a hybrid WDM-TDM technology with reliability and efficiency in bandwidth and power consumption. The NG'PON2 standard also demand an Optical Distribution Network (ODN) backward compatibility with previous ITU-T PON standards. In this paper we provide a comprehensive way to understand NG-PON2 improvements and present an experimental demonstration of a NG-PON-2 compliant network deployment, employing BER and Optical Path Penalty (OPP) measurements, in order to verify the performance of different inter-channel spacing variations for determining its impact in the data transmission. Results show that there is a 3 dB penalty when using 0.2 nm of inter-channel spacing with respect to a 0.4 nm of inter-channel spacing.