Performance Evaluation of Unidirectional TDM PON and WDM PON

Access networks are developed for reducing the congestion occurred due to high bandwidth demand. Active Optical Network (AON), the first fiber based network, caused less reliability and high cost. Thus AON is replaced by Passive Optical Networks (PON), which is a point to multipoint optical fiber access network. It uses passive components to enable the optical fiber to serve multiple users. The different unidirectional PON technologies such as Time Division Multiplexing Passive Optical Networks (TDM PON) and Wavelength Division Multiplexing Passive Optical Networks (WDM PON), with different capacities (users) for varying fiber length are simulated and their performances are compared based on the Quality factor (Q-factor) and the Bit Error Rate (BER) using OptiSystem 12.0 software. In the analysis, the performance of the unidirectional WDM PON with 2 user systems were better with high Q-factor and low BER compared to that of 2 user TDM PON systems.