Integrated Wireless-pon access Network Architectures Milos Milosavljevic

Chapter 1 
Introduction – PON and WiMAX Technologies 
6 
North America in contrast to Europe that is moving forward with several fibre deployment 
projects so far [9]. Consequently, detailed analysis of time division multiplexed (TDM)-PON 
and its standards will be performed in the following chapter.
The dominance of PON systems is reflected in the chart of Figure 1-2 which compares the 
connected numbers of PON subscribers to active Ethernet subscribers, showing the significant 
market advantage of PON systems [10]. 
Figure 1-2: PON versus active Ethernet deployment [10]
In parallel with the above, broadband access networks in excessive deployment and increasing 
development include wireless alternatives, employed to satisfy low field deployment cost and 
mobility. The two broadband wireless access standards, WiMAX [11, 12] and 3GPP LTE [13], 
are promising to deliver speeds in the range of hundreds of Mbit/s for point to multipoint 
wireless broadband communication supporting services required by 4G networks. Nevertheless, 
these broadband wireless solutions are currently not viable to support high-speed Internet and 
media-rich video applications since the relatively low aggregate bandwidth is shared among 
tens to hundreds of users over macro-cellular distances [14]. As with the advancements of novel 
transmission technologies, such as advanced signal processing techniques and smart antennas, 

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Chapter 1 
Introduction – PON and WiMAX Technologies 
7 
these standards are however continuously upgraded for the delivery of even higher throughputs 
and therefore enhanced quality of service per a subscriber [2, 15]
From the deployment prospective, WiMAX is considered worldwide for mobile broadband 
wireless solutions while LTE is expecting delays in deployment due to the limited LTE-enabled 
devices as further developments are required from the silicon side [16]. 
Finally, for high-speed local and personal area networks (LAN and PAN), deployed mainly for 
in-door environments, wireless-fidelity (WiFi) [17, 18] and ultra-wideband (UWB) [19] have 
emerged from different standardisation bodies as state-of-the-art solutions to offer data rates in 
the range of 100 Mbit/s to 1 Gbit/s respectively. However, they only provide a very limited 
mobility and cannot guarantee the required performance to deliver real time multimedia 
services [20, 21].