Optimising dual homing for long-reach passive optical networks

Mass deployment of fibre access networks is without doubt the next short to medium term goal of many network operators around the globe. Long-Reach Passive Optical Network (LR-PON) has been proposed as a solution to help spreading mass deployment of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH), by reducing the cost per customer compared to current commercially available technologies. This paper addresses the issue of reducing protection costs of dual homing for LR-PON deployment by optimally configuring the number of PONs and their sizes. We study two different ways of configuring PONs. The first approach is about designing fibre tree network by trading distance and the split-size of the PONs optimally. Second, we study a ring architecture where some PONs can be connected in a chain and may not be connected to two metro-core nodes directly. The scalability of our approach is demonstrated by performing nation-wide study of Ireland. Our results show that the open ring strategy that can reduced the total distance-based cost by approximately 66% in rural areas where the architecture can be applied.