One of the main challenges facing cable operators converting their access networks to fiber is the need to minimize upgrade cost and complexity by maintaining their existing headend and customer premises equipment.

When deploying fiber-based access networks, one approach used to preserve the usability of the headend and customer premise equipment is to employ a technology called Radio Frequency over Glass (RFoG). In this model, the RF signals generated by the headend and customer premises equipment are converted at the customer premises and headend to the optical domain for transmission over the fiber. The conversion at the customer premises is done by an RFoG micronode. ADTRAN offers both standard RFoG micronodes as well as optical beat interference (OBI) mitigating models.