A Bibliometric Analysis and Visualization of Passive Optical Network Research in the Last Decade

Passive optical networks (PONs) are the most successful broadband access solutions for its wide bandwidth, low-cost deployment worldwide, and maintenance. In the last decade, the diverse and prevalent research related to PONs sustains 330+ science citation index (SCI) articles per year, with 9.18 average citations per article, making it "big literature data". This article, for the first time, presents the graphical representation of knowledge base, knowledge domain, and knowledge evolution of PON research using co-citation analysis based on 3381 SCI publications worldwide from 2010 to 2019 in bibliometric visualization tool- CiteSpace. The bibliographic analysis focused on 528 important research articles, 34 hotspots, 155 research frontier keywords, 481 core authors, 185 cited authors, 58 countries, 254 institutions, and 118 journals. Based on the frequency of keywords, Modulation, WDM PON, Transmission, Semiconductor optical amplifier, and Dynamic bandwidth allocation are the dominant and turning points in the structural basis of PON research. The most prominent research hotspots appearing in recent years are Energy efficiency, NG-EPON, and Chaotic encryption. The trend of future research on PONs is from TWDM PON issues, fronthaul implementation in NG-PON2, 5G-PON and encryption methods for physical layer security. The leading core authors, institutes, countries, and journals were also identified related to the PON research. This analysis would serve as a comprehensive guide on the status and future research trends on PONs for the aspirant researchers.