Therefore, many smart hospitals and healthcare
service facilities are turning to passive optical LAN (POL)
technologies to meet the high-bandwidth and high-availability
demands of life-saving services now and into the
future. Passive optical LAN technology is the network
alternative to meet and exceed the needs of ambulatory,
behavioral, critical access, hospital, laboratory and longterm
healthcare facility applications for the next 30 years
and beyond.
WHAT IS PASSIVE OPTICAL LAN
AND ITS BENEFITS?
The passive optical LAN is based on passive optical networking
technology, optical fiber cabling, and advanced
Ethernet and is highly suitable for health care. G-PON and
FIGURE 1: Legacy copper-based healthcare network design with 12 to 24 Cat 6A cables per room.
January/February/March 2020 I 47
Patient Rooms
Patient Rooms
Patient Rooms
Operating Room
Operating Room
Nurse
Call Station
Waiting Room
Radiology
Main Data Center
10G XGS-PON are field-proven and mature technologies
that are used to deliver commercial and mission-critical
broadband services to millions of FTTx users worldwide.
The POL architecture includes single centralized active
equipment, referred to as the optical line terminal (OLT),
and simple, passive fiber network thin-client edge
devices known as optical network terminals (ONTs).
The POL infrastructure uses fiber optic cabling that
provides bandwidth measured in terabytes. As a flexible
infrastructure, it also reduces network complexity and
enables scalability and convergence of all services
(e.g., voice, data, video) onto one single network.
Because of POL’s simple and centralized architecture,
multiple distribution layers that are typical for the
traditional LAN are removed. The workgroup switches