Security in Passive Optical Network via Wavelength Hopping and Codes cycling techniques

Abstract

Passive Optical Network (PON) provides the answer to increasing demand on bandwidth in access networks; however, PON uses shared fiber link with Broadcast and Select (B&S) type of downstream traffic on single wavelength, which introduces data vulnerability to eavesdropping. This paper proposes an approach to enhance security using slow wavelength hopping and codes cycling in order to make it difficult for eavesdropper to collect good sample for crypto-analysis. Current state of optical transmitters and filters technology does not support high data rate operation in fast hopping mode, and the approach for slow hopping based on encoding each Ethernet frame/packet by single wavelength selected from ONU’s specific wavelength sequence generated by mapping ONU’s code matrices to network’s wavelength grid matrix. Multiple code matrices assignment to single ONU cycled in different order enhances security by reducing probability of tracking the hopping pattern.