A B-ISDN local distribution system based on a passive optical network

An experimental system that transports ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) cells through a passive optical local network (APON) is described. It distributes a 155.52 Mb/s ATM stream from an ATM node to 64 customer ends, synchronizing return cells to interleave at the exchange. A variant of the Orwell protocol is used for bandwidth control. Key features demonstrated are clock phase alignment and an exchange optical receiver design to realize a practical system. APON provides dialog service to those smaller customers that cannot be economically served using dedicated point-to-point links, permitting early economic deployment of ATM to smaller, or start up customers