PMC-Sierra (News - Alert) has announced the industry’s most advanced EPON ONU devices with its integrated Optical Analog Front End (OAFE) technology optimized for the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) market segment, one of the most rapidly growing segments in this market. In terms of solid VoIP equipment, the company’s PA 6500 family consists of three devices:

-          The PAS6502 System-on-Chip (SoC) for data and VoIP Single-Family Units (SFUs),

-          The PAS6500 SoC for data SFUs

-          The PAS6501 SoC for Multiple Dwelling Units (MDUs).

This family of VoIP equipment devices is the first to integrate an EPON OAFE that consists of a burst mode laser driver, a limiting amplifier and a receiver control processor. The devices reduce the cost, size and power of the ONU by connecting to an on-board Bi-directional Optical Sub Assembly (BoSA) instead of an optical transceiver. This method also improves diagnostic capabilities.

The high level of integration offered in this family of VoIP equipment solutions, which also includes a VoIP processor, helps to significantly reduce the cost of ONU equipment for OEMs. All three devices in this product family offer PMC-Sierra’s GigaPASS architecture, which achieves sustained gigabit and greater data rates. This architecture is already used in more than 15 million PON devices deployed throughout the global market.

Discussing the importance of OEMs, Raphael Sankar, vice president and co-general manager of PMC-Sierra’s FTTH division said, “OEMs worldwide are constantly looking for ways to offer new, advanced services, reduce costs and lower power consumption.”

“Our third generation EPON ONU SoC addresses all three objectives by embedding a programmable networking engine, offering unique power saving algorithms and featuring innovative silicon integration,” he added.

This latest VoIP equipment product from PMC-Sierra also integrates a programmable networking engine that delivers enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) to comply with China Telecom’s (News - Alert) specification version 2.1. Power consumption is reduced by as much as 80 percent and the product family adds mobile backhaul over EPON support with the integration of synchronous Ethernet and time of day delivery.

“EPON deployments continue to grow in China and Japan, and are now expanding to the U.S. markets,” said Jag Bolaria, senior analyst, The Linley Group. “OEMs need to be able to reduce power consumption and equipment costs while increasing functionality in order to meet the service provider requirements for new deployments.”