Planning an FTTH network and estimate its capacity evolution in the long term

For years copper-based cable has been the standard for network connectivity. As services such as video streaming and wireless communication become ubiquitous, and concern over network security grows, traditionally copper cabling has become weak. Advances in Passive Optical Network (PON) and Active Ethernet (AE) technologies offer new, cost-effective copper-based cable option that allows the transition to fiber-optic cabling. The challenging part of this thesis is to adapt a pre-existing topological network (that is not primary designed for optical fiber communication) in order to build a Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) network, taking into account the evolution of the network with respect to the bitrate demands of coming years. The project has been developed with the Internet Service Provider (ISP) Fastalp s.r.l., located in Pont-Saint-Martin (Aosta, Italy). After a thorough analysis of the two fiber technologies Passive Optical Network (PON) and Active Ethernet (AE), we choose to use the PON solution. The main reason behind that are the unitary costs per Point of presence (POP), building (BL), Deploy of fiber per km (KM) and client of the two technologies. Another important reason for choosing Passive Optical Network (PON) technology is the co-existence between different PON technologies, so that by changing the transmitter, receiver and the end user devices, and employing Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) CEX multiplexer, it is possible to upgrade the network without changing all the core equipment. This obviously is reflected in the lower cost in upgrading PON technology. The last key topics of this thesis are the estimation of the cost/income in the long term and the estimation of the network evolution based on the Cisco VNI Global Fixed and Mobile Internet traffic forecasts 2017-2022. The cost/income estimation was performed to do a bottom line analysis, so that to evaluate the enteprise’s income after all the expenses have deducted from revenues. In order to estimate the network evolution, in the last part of this manuscript is estimated the entire project bitrate demand evolution taking into account a customer growth of 30% per year, the increasing Minimum Cell Rate (MCR) estimated for each internet profile and the network infrastructure branch of the pilot area. Two different evolution scenarios are proposed for the network evolution: • PON co-existence: The first scenario consists in upgrading the PON to Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology with the co-existence between the two. • Reducing the split ratio: The second scenario consists in reducing the initial split ratio of the Optical Line Termination (OLT) of the PON network.