PMC-Sierra - Quad-Port EPON OLT SoCs for Rapidly Growing FTTH Deployments

Carriers are looking for ways to deliver new services and higher bandwidth to a growing base of subscribers, while improving network reliability and reducing operational cost, said Raphael Sankar, vice president and co-general manager of PMC's FTTH division. PMC is the only provider that can deliver this level of innovation across a complete portfolio of solutions for EPON, GPON and 10G PON with maximum software reuse, and this solidifies our leadership in the optical fiber access market segment.

PMC's new EPON OLT family includes three SoCs that comply with IEEE 802.3ah and China carrier specifications for EPON networks: PAS5404 with 'lite' traffic management, PAS5414 with fully featured traffic management, and PAS5424 with fully featured traffic management and a cascading option that eliminates the need for an aggregation switch on the OLT line card. Innovative functionality includes:

Advanced Optical Diagnostic Unit: The first EPON devices to integrate in-band Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR), which enables carriers to test the outdoor fiber-optics line while in service (see Figure 3). If errors are found, the tool can locate the problem within a few meters. Today, carriers must take down the line and use specialized test equipment to find these problems. In-band OTDR keeps uptime and offers major savings in carrier OPEX and CAPEX.

Network Power Save Controller: The first PON devices to implement a sophisticated algorithm for ONU remote power-down at idle periods and recovery of full operation without losing data. The use of PAS5400, together with PMC's PAS6500 EPON ONU SoC, can reduce ONU power consumption by up to 80 percent while maintaining connectivity and Quality of Service (QoS).
Mobile Backhaul Support: By supporting synchronization features, such as IEEE 1588v2 standard, Synchronous Ethernet and Time of Day delivery over EPON, carriers can finally use EPON as the uplink to the mobile backhaul, with improved reliability using the built-in PON protection.
Integrated Traffic Management and Packet Processing: The PAS5400 devices provide the highest network functionality and QoS via an integrated packet processor that enables deep packet inspection and supports IPv4 and IPv6 protocols. Integrated wire-speed traffic management can replace a separate traffic management device to enable higher density, lower power OLT equipment.
Line Card Traffic Aggregation, Direct Connectivity to the Backplane: Multiple PAS5400 devices can be cascaded to connect directly to the backplane using the integrated cascading function. This enables high port-count OLT line cards, while eliminating the need for a separate aggregation switch on board.

All devices integrate four 1Gb/s upstream and downstream PON channels, including the EPON MAC, SERDES and fast-locking Burst Mode CDR (BMCDR), and support SGMII, XAUI and RXAUI backplane interfaces. On-chip fiber Automatic Protection Switching (APS) enables a rapid switch-over in cases of failures in the optical network.

PMC's OLT solutions include reference designs and software design kits (SDK). The complete EPON OLT software package is fully compatible with PMC's widely deployed PAS5201 and PAS5204 1G-EPON OLT software and with PAS8400 10G-EPON software and is portable to any real-time operating system, such as Linux and VxWorks, and to any processor. The SDK features an EPON protocol stack, a complete set of traffic management drivers, IEEE 802.3ah OAM protocol, including operator-specific stacks, optical diagnostics functions, and pre-integrated peripheral drivers.