OFDMA based PONs with reduced hardware requirements through advanced signal processing

Possibilities of reducing hardware requirements and therefore costs in an OFDMA-PON are shown. This is achieved by reducing the complexity of A/D and D/A converters and of the Digital Signal Processing (DSP) involved. The feasibility is shown experimentally as well. Furthermore, by incorporating techniques of the copper based access network, a flexible transmission network with advanced signal processing can be achieved and by applying techniques like bit and power loading, the data rate or the spectral efficiency can be increased. Moreover by assigning only certain subcarriers to various users, the effect of power fading can be mitigated.