Optimization of asymmetric passive optical splitters

Passive optical networks (PONs) represent a new promising solution for modern access networks to meet the increasing requirements on transmission rate for demanding multimedia services. The essential component in PONs is passive optical splitter, which allows splitting the optical signals and thanks to that the optical infrastructure can be branched, enabling more optical units to be connected into the network. Basically, there are two types of splitters - symmetric and asymmetric ones. The asymmetric passive splitters offer several interesting advantages, because their splitting ratio could be possibly calculated and optimized for given specific scenario. Thanks to this optimization, the overall value of attenuation of all their branches could be balanced according to the whole optical infrastructure, which would enable reaching the optimal situation in the entire PON network. This article deals with the method of calculation the optimized splitting ratio of asymmetric splitters and it presents the application in Matlab environment, which serves for quick calculations and for designing the asymmetric splitters with desired parameters.