
Total Access 300 Series Small Business Unit ONT Installation and Maintenance Guide
1-2 612877SBONT-5B
GPON Technology
GPON technology provides a consistent and common approach to advancing the public
communications network using:
• Traditional telephone services [Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS)]
• High speed data services
•RFVideoservices
The GPON network consists of an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) located at the central office
and an Optical Network Terminal (ONT) located at the customer premises. Between them lies
the Optical Distribution Network (ODN), consisting of fibers and passive splitters or couplers.
A splitter is a device that divides an optical signal into two or more signals. It can also
reassemble signals from multiple signal sources into one signal. The GPON technology is
based on Passive Optical Network (PON) technology.
Telecommunication networks traditionally use devices that require power to transmit data
from one point to another, including processors, memory chips, repeaters, and relays. With
passive optical networks, components that need power to transmit data between the central
office and the customer premises are replaced by passive components that guide traffic based
on splitting optical wavelengths to end points along the way. These passive components, such
as splitters and coupler devices, work by passing or restricting light and do not require power
to transmit data.
In a PON, a single fiber can be run from the serving exchange out to a subdivision or office
park. Then, individual fiber strands can be run to each building. Also, serving equipment can
be split from the main fiber using passive splitters/couplers. This allows one fiber cable from
the exchange to the customer to be shared by many customers. This dramatically lowers the
overall costs of deployment for Fiber To The Premises (FTTP) applications.
In this type of network, the subscriber’s voice, video, and data devices are connected to the
GPON via the ONT. The ONT translates IP data and analog voice into GPON Encapsulated
Method (GEM) frames and combines/splits the signal with analog and/or digital video to
and from the OLT. The signal is split/combined at the OLT similar to the ONT.
GEM is based on the SONET/SDH Generic Framing Procedure (GFP) for handling time
division multiple access (TDMA), ATM and Ethernet based traffic without additional encap-
sulation protocols.
Signal transmission from ONTs to the OLT use a type of TDMA. TDMA is a technique used to
frame channels of data. In this technique, data communication sessions originating from
multiple points are transmitted in turn. Each data communication session is assigned a time
slot in the TDMA frame and transmits (or accesses that time slot) only at that time.
To allow for the transmission of downstream and upstream traffic on a single fiber, different
wavelengths are used for both directions. Downstream traffic uses 1490 nm while upstream
traffic uses 1310 nm. For RF TV distribution, a second downstream wavelength of 1550 nm is
used. RF uses 1610 nm for the upstream return path.
Downstream data is broadcast from the OLT to all ONTs. Each ONT processes the data
destined to it by matching the address at the protocol transmission unit header. The
downstream PON signal is broadcast to up to 32 ONTs with a data rate of 2.5 Gbps for voice
and data, plus the additional video overlay wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) signal.
In the upstream direction transmission of data must be coordinated between each ONT to
avoid collisions due to the shared media of the optical distribution network (ODN). Data is
transmitted according to control mechanisms configured in the OLT. The aggregate upstream
rate is 1.25 Gbps.