By Mark Laubach, Broadcom® Corporation
Following the interest from both the Chinese and North American cable industries, the IEEE Standards Association approved a project under the IEEE 802.3 Standard For Ethernet Working Group with the scope of extending the EPON protocol over coaxial (EPoC) networks. The P802.3bn EPoC Task Force is in progress, developing a physical layer standard for symmetric and asymmetric operation of up to 10 Gb/s on point-to-multipoint coaxial distribution plants comprising either active or passive media. EPoC objectives, key technical and performance considerations, and resulting architecture are presented. Select comparisons of EPoC with the DOCSIS 3.1 PHY including common component architectures are noted. The resulting PHY standard will enable several deployment models, increasing the number of options available to cable operators as part of their future service growth.