Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are considered as the way to make photonic systems or subsystems cheap and ubiquitous. PICs still are several orders of magnitude more expensive than their microelectronic counterparts, which has restricted their application to a few niche markets.

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Abstract-This paper reports on the architectural, protocol, physical layer and integrated testbed demonstrations carried out by the DISCUS FP7 consortium in the area of accessmetro network convergence. Our architecture modelling results show the vast potential for cost and power savings that node consolidation can bring. The architecture however also recognises the limitations of long-reach transmission for low latency 5G services, and proposes how to address such shortcomings in future projects. The testbed results, which have been conducted end-to-end, across access-metro and core, and have targeted all the layers of the network, from the application down to the physical layer, show the practical feasibility of the concepts proposed in the project.Index Terms-access metro, network convergence, fixed mobile convergence, long-reach PON, flat optical core, optical island, 5G architecture, next generation multi wavelength PON.

Fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) has promised to increase the capacity in telecommunications access networks for well over thirty years. While it is widely recognized that optical fibre based access networks will be a necessity in the short to medium term future, its large upfront cost and regulatory issues are pushing many operators to further postpone its deployment, while installing intermediate, unambitious solutions such as Fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC). Such high investment cost of both network access and core capacity upgrade often derives from poor planning strategies that do not consider the necessity to adequately modify the network architecture to fully exploit the cost benefit that a fibrecentric solution can bring.DISCUS is a European Framework 7 Integrated Project that, building on optical-centric solutions such as Long-reach passive optical access and flat optical core, aims to deliver a cost-effective architecture for ubiquitous broadband services. DISCUS analyses, designs and demonstrates end-toend architectures and technologies capable of saving cost and energy by reducing the number of electronic terminations in the network, and sharing the deployment costs among a larger number of users, compared to current fibre access systems. This paper describes the network architecture and the supporting technologies behind DISCUS, giving an overview of the concepts and methodologies that will be used to deliver our end-to-end network solution.

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