Energy-efficient technologies for point-to-point fiber access

This article discusses the fundamental issues and the technologies to achieve an energy-efficient Gigabit-Ethernet point-to-point (PtP) fiber access network. To minimize the power consumption of PtP fiber access for long-term development, it is essential to optimize each of the network components such as optical transceiver, user network interface, Ethernet aggregator and also their modes of operation. Our analysis shows that the energy consumption of a PtP fiber access network using our proposed technologies can be up to 7.5 times lower than that of the 2010 technologies when a combination of appropriate technologies is applied.