Huawei said it unveiled the world's first single-wavelength 50G passive optical network (PON) prototype at the Mobile World Congress 2019. The prototype can provide 50 Gbps downstream transmission rates and 25 Gbps/50 Gbps upstream transmission rates over a single wavelength.
Compared with 10G PON, the 50G PON technology not only increases the bandwidth fivefold, but also effectively supports innovative services such as 5G and Cloud VR, services which pose strict requirements on delay and clock synchronization, Huawei said.
50G PON has been considered the next-generation PON technology standard for some time, and in February 2018, the ITU-T officially initiated the 50G PON standards project. The standards are expected to be finalized in 2020 and put into commercial use in 2023.
Huawei said it has actively participated in research into 50G PON technology, contributing standards documents and conducting research in collaboration with mainstream global operators. The prototype provides a means of verifying the feasibility of a 50G PON product roadmap.
Developed based on mature 25G optical components, Huawei's 50G PON prototype achieves 50 Gbps transmission rates over a single wavelength through fibre dispersion compensation and transmitter/receiver bandwidth compensation technologies on the physical PON links. Under the 1:64 split ratio, the prototype supports transmissions over 20 km, and enables customers to transition to 50G PON networks without needing to change the ODN of the live network. The prototype is also fully compatible with XG(S)-PON and 10G-EPON in the 50G PON wavelength planning. To protect operators' investment, 50G PON boards are designed so that they can be inserted and run in the Huawei smart distributed OLT MA5800.
