Highspeed 50 Gb/s Passive Optical Network (50G-PON) Applications in Industrial Networks

50 Gb/s passive optical network (50G-PON) is the latest highspeed access network standard approved by the International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T). 50G-PON is developed to meet the ever-growing bandwidth requirements from broadband access users, especially for new applications in the areas other than traditional residential and business access. This paper focuses on new applications of using 50G-PON in industrial networks. These applications employ the highspeed capability of 50G-PON to facilitate industrial manufacturing, product quality assessment, as well as smart factory management. After introducing the main features of 50G-PON and the recent progress in industrial networks, an architecture is proposed to employ 50G-PON for industrial networks. Key requirements of industrial networks are analyzed, including bandwidth, delay, and jitter. Use cases are discussed to illustrate typical applications and scenarios. A testbed with a 50G-PON prototype system is setup to evaluate the industrial network application. Test results show salient performance of using 50G-PON for industrial network management and automation.