Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) System: A VHDL Implementation of ONU Auto-discovery Process of the IEEE 802.3ah MPCP Protocol

Recently, EPON has been introduced to represent the convergence of low-cost Ethernet equipment and fiber infrastructure. It is appeared to be the best candidate for the next-generation access network, as it allows cost savings in terms of: cable deployment, components usage, and network maintenance and management. Auto-discovery process is an important process used to identify a new end-user active element (called ONU) added to the network. Indeed, this book provides a MAC design for the ONU auto-discovery process. This design is based on the IEEE 802.3ah standard of the MPCP protocol. In this book, we cover the literature review for ONU design from academic and industrial views. It describes the VHDL implementation for the design and the validation/verification steps using an OLT model. Finally, the design demonstration and the synthesis results are presented.