Huawei launches world's first 50G PON prototype

[Shenzhen, China, March 6, 2019] Huawei has unveiled the world's first single-wavelength 50G passive optical network (PON) prototype at the Mobile World Congress 2019 (MWC 2019). The prototype, which can provide 50 Gbps downstream transmission rates and 25 Gbps/50 Gbps upstream transmission rates over a single wavelength, demonstrates that next-generation PON technology is now mature enough to begin focusing on product development—a much-anticipated milestone in the technology's development and a welcome confidence boost for the 50G PON industry.

Compared with 10G PON, the 50G PON technology not only increases the bandwidth fivefold, but also effectively supports innovative services such as 5G and Cloud VR, services which pose strict requirements on delay and clock synchronization. 50G PON has been considered as the next-generation PON technology standard by industry standards organizations, operators, and equipment vendors for some time now. In February 2018, the ITU-T officially initiated the 50G PON standards project and began developing technical solutions and standards. The standards are expected to be finalized in 2020 and put into commercial use in 2023.

As a key member of the ITU-T and IEEE, Huawei has actively participated in research into 50G PON technology, contributing standards documents and conducting innovative research in collaboration with mainstream global operators. Launching the first 50G PON prototype represents Huawei's latest and most significant move in the support of 50G PON research, providing a means of verifying the feasibility of 50G PON productization and supporting the development of the next generation PON industry.

Developed based on mature 25G optical components, Huawei's 50G PON prototype achieves 50 Gbps transmission rates over a single wavelength through fiber dispersion compensation and transmitter/receiver bandwidth compensation technologies on the physical PON links. Under the 1:64 split ratio, the prototype supports transmissions over 20 km, and enables customers to smoothly transition to 50G PON networks without needing to change the ODN of the live network. The prototype is also fully compatible with XG(S)-PON and 10G-EPON in the 50G PON wavelength planning. To protect operators' investment, 50G PON boards are designed so that they can be inserted and run in the Huawei new-generation smart distributed OLT MA5800.

During the onsite demonstration, the prototype reduced the upstream one-way delay from the millisecond level down to the microsecond level while achieving a tenfold improvement in clock precision. This suggests that the prototype is well suited to the needs of future digital home broadband, government/enterprise cloud private lines, and 5G bearer services.

Huawei has been actively investing in the research and standardization of ultra broadband access technologies, and has held important seats in multiple standard organizations such as ITU-T, IEEE, and BBF. Huawei is committed to providing operators with future-oriented innovative solutions, promoting the healthy development of the ultra-broadband industry, and building a smarter, better-connected world.