Challenges for optoelectronic hardware in fiber-to-the home systems

Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) is considered to be the ultimate approach to delivering services such as video, high-speed data etc. Deployment of a FTTH network would require widespread use of optoelectronic and optical hardware and thus could provide an application requiring massive volumes of these components. This paper presents an assessment of the optoelectronic component technology required for a FTTH system. It is argued that the performance requirements for this application are rather modest, allowing the use of existing device designs. The challenge for the optoelertronics industry is to reduce the cost and improve the device reliability to a level where a FTTH network becomes practical to deploy.