Advantages of joint access network planning in dense populated areas

The continuous increase of services bandwidth is forcing operators to upgrade their access networks. Fixed access networks are migrating from copper technology and GPON to new optical access networks, whereas mobile networks are migrating from 3G to 4G and in the near future to 5G. However, these migrations are being done in parallel and independently, causing inefficiency and increasing the costs. In this paper, we analyze two passive optical network architectures supporting access and backhaul networks. We present the comparison of independent vs. a joint access network planning with regard to cost. It is shown that new architecture offer savings (almost 20% savings in infrastructure costs when compared to GPON). Furthermore, a joint planning offers more savings (a further 3.5% with respect the disjoint planning) although using the same architecture. However, savings promise to increase significantly with the number of base stations, as expected with the use of smaller cells (e.g., micro- and pico-cells). The impact of protection to cost is also analyzed.