Flexible space division multiplexed WDM-PON with 16-QAM point-to-point and polSK modulated multicast overlay services

The capacity of conventional networks has almost reached the Shannon limit despite of implementing the digital signal processing (DSP) techniques [1]. The deployed passive optical networks (PONs) for broadband access services also require high data bandwidth to meet the subscribers requirement. This up-gradation need for high counts of feeder fibers that will cause congestion in the installation ducts and laborious maintenance. To overcome this problem and to increase the capacity, space-division multiplexing (SDM) transmission using Multi-Core-Fibers (MCFs), has been proposed and proven to be feasible [2,3]. In order to realize long-term evolution (LTE) functionalities, i.e. protocol transparency and flexible scalability, the network architecture of SDM-PONs for point-to-point (P2P) and multicast overlay (MCO) video/audio services [4] should be investigated both for performance and compatibility.