Real-time Monitoring of Ethernet Passive Optical Network Using Burst-mode FBGs

This paper describes a real-time monitoring system in Ethernet passive optical networks (EPON) that uses burst-mode fiber Bragg grating (FBG) optical sensors. The FBG interrogation unit in the optical line terminal (OLT) transmits the monitoring wavelength to optical network units (ONUs). The FBG sensor unit in each ONU returns a burst-mode monitoring signal to the OLT. As the system applies time division multiple access (TDMA), a uniform Bragg wavelength can be used to monitor the EPON system. The FBG interrogation unit analyzes the received burst-mode monitoring signals and outputs fault information on the ONU branches in EPON. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed monitoring system based on TDMA. In addition, we compared the proposed TDMA-based monitoring system with a WDMA-based monitoring system.