PIEMAN | Welcome to the Photonic Integrated Extended Metro and Access Network | Next Generation Broadband Access Systems

The Photonic Integrated Extended Metro and Access Network (PIEMAN) project performs ambitious physical layer research into a future broadband optical access and metro system with capacity and reach well beyond what is achievable today. Main Objectives: The technical objectives of the PIEMAN project are to build a radically new photonic (all-optical) communication system which will allow individual customers to directly access bandwidths at up to 10 Gbit/s upstream and downstream. At the same time it will integrate access and metro into one system, thereby greatly simplifying the network architecture and so significantly reducing the cost to deliver future broadband services to all residential and SME customers. In the state-of-the-art the access and metro portions of the network are provided by separate systems. As bandwidths grow this traditional approach of separate access and metro networks will become prohibitively expensive:-

from a capex viewpoint due to the large number of network elements and interfaces to interconnect them and
from an opex viewpoint due to network design complexity, large number of network elements, large footprint and high electrical power consumption.

PIEMAN therefore proposes a new generation of photonic communication system which integrates access and metro into one system. In order to achieve this for European national geographies requires a reach of ~100 km from the customer to the major service node. There will typically be ~100 major service nodes in a typical European network. The ~100 km reach is to enable full coverage and the option of dual parenting for resilience. To deploy point-to-point fibre from each customer to the service node up to ~100 km away would be prohibitively expensive. PIEMAN will therefore use multi-wavelength, high split passive optical networks (PONs) to make efficient use of fibre. The first generations of PONs are now standardised and commercially available. The most advanced of these (GPON and GE-PON) typically offer 2.4 Gbit/s downstream and 1.2 Gbit/s upstream, shared between 32 customers (via passive optical splitters and a TDMA protocol), over a reach of up to 20km. PIEMAN will perform physical layer research aimed at a new generation of PON with features totally beyond the capability of today’s PONs:-

Bandwidth per customer of 10 Gbit/s downstream and 10 Gbit/s upstream Each 10 Gbit/s wavelength is shared by up to 512 customers Significant use of DWDM to provide further fibre efficiency – up to 32 wavelengths each carrying 10 Gbit/s. The project will therefore take a hybrid WDM/TDMA approach
All-optical reach of 100 km using optical amplifiers. No use of optical-electrical-optical conversions at intermediate locations.

While the PIEMAN architecture will support fibre-to-the-premises it will also as evolutionary steps be capable of feeding hybrid architectures such as fibre-to-the-cabinet. The focus of the PIEMAN project will be in the physical layer where some major challenges lie. Higher layer and MAC protocols will be studied in parallel within complementary IST project MUSE.