ABSTRACT
Telecommunication networks in all their various shapes are indispensable to bring information quickly anywhere and anytime, which is a vital need of our modern global society. Wireless mobile telecommunication is attracting ever more users, and enables a fast roll-out of services to the end users without the need to install extensive first-mile customer access networks. With a fully passive optical power splitter in the branching point, the topology is also widely known as the passive optical network (PON). This chapter discusses the architectural aspects and key functionalities needed at the subsequent hierarchical network layers. The hierarchical network layers include core networks, metropolitan networks, and access networks. Access networks carry a wide range of services to and from the residential end customers, ranging from voice-based services, audio-based ones, video-based ones, to Internet/data services. Basically, three architectures may be deployed for the fiber access network: point-to-point topology, active star topology and passive star topology.
