Fiber Access Cost Models from Road NGN Project

F. Matera1, M.Vari2, S. Medranda Posada3, G. Maier3, F. Giannone4, L. Valcarenghi5, A. Marotta6, C.

Antonelli6
1 Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, via del Policlinico 147, 00161, Roma, Italy
2 Universit Roma 2 Tor Vergata, Roma Italy
3 Politecnico di Milano
4 CNIT, Pisa, Italy
5 Scuola Superiore SantAnna, Pisa, Italy
6 Universit dellAquila
*mat@fub.it

Keywords: FTTx, VDSL, Vectoring, Access, Network costs
Abstract
This work reports the studies carried out in the framework of
the Italian PRIN ROAD-NGN project about costs and
strategies for the implementations of next generation
networks based on optical fibers, including novel solutions
regarding next generation passive optical networks. The paper
reports some general guidelines concerning the
implementation of solutions based on Fiber to the x (where x
stands for Cabinet, Building and Home) and specialized
solutions for the city of LAquila, where specific interests of
innovations are required, considering the necessity of full
network rebuilding after the earthquake of 2009.
1. Introduction
PRIN ROAD NGN project investigated on different topics
regarding the development of optical access networks
proposing several architectures based on the evolution of the
fiber access systems (WDM PON, OFDM PON,...). Details
can be found in http://www.roadngn.uniroma3.it. In this
project several aspects were also analyzed concerning
investments and costs of such architectures and some
solutions and implementations have been proposed for a new
access network for L'Aquila, where the earthquake damaged
the majority of the existing infrastructures, and their
replacement with new ones is more suitable than their repair.
Therefore LAquila downtown area became an ideal
framework for the design, the testing, and the implementation
of new and efficient solutions oriented to the smart-city
paradigm. The LAquila network will be based on a MAN
architecture consisting of a fiber-optic ring with thirty-one
access nodes that will be implemented by the INCIPICT
(Innovative City Planning Through Information &
Communications Technologies) project [1], including various
wireless local area network extensions.
Here we report our evaluations concerning the costs of the
fiber deployments of Fiber To The x (FTTx, where x is for
Cabinet, Building and Home), passing from FTTC, to FTTB
up to FTTH accesses. Then we report our studies concerning
solutions, costs and strategies for a FTTB-H network for
lAquila, introducing also novel algorithms to make more
efficient the deployment of the optical fiber in terms of digs
and reuse of existing infrastructures. Furthermore novel
solutions for passive optical networks (PON) including
considerations on power budget.
2. Overview about FTTx architectures and
relative costs
In order to increase the number of subscribers and user
capacity, a new generation of PON, the Time and Wavelength
Division Multiplexed PON (TWDM) is being standardized.
TWDM PONs combine TDM with WDM to exploit the
advantages of power splitting and wavelength routing and to
increase the per-user access rates. In the literature PON
design approaches have been proposed that optimize the PON
device placement [2] and compare different PON
technologies in terms of cost versus performance [3]. In
addition, as in [4] solution for PON unbundling have been
analyzed. In [5] the authors presented a model specialized for
the design of FTTH in rural environments; they demonstrate a
reduction of the initial investment by taking into account
actual pricing and real geographical coordinates. In [6] the
authors propose a network design optimization scheme for a
greenfield deployment. Considering the signal attenuation and
the unicast/multicast traffic demands, the scheme determines
the design and dimensioning of the most cost-effective set of
hybrid PON networks.
To give some hints about strategies for new FTTx access
networks for Italy we first compare the costs of the different
FTTC, FTTB and FTTH architectures starting from the
current Italian access network architecture and totally
replacing the twisted pair primary network (from the Central
office to first cabinet) with optical rings according to the
FTTC-VDSL2 model that permits at least 30 Mb/s at all. The
cost of the fiber penetration in the secondary network, to
achieve the FTTB is considered, for different scenarios of
building and Housing Unit (HU) density [7]. Finally the cost
of the FTTH is analyzed in comparison to FTTB architecture.
The model supposes a mix of different fiber installations and
in particular micro trench, one day dig, and piling air. Clearly
the cooperation with societies operating with energy and other

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utilities can decrease such costs for the exploiting of existing
infrastructures. The model supposes the buildings located in
the framework of a reticular structure consisting of squares.
According to the building and housing density average costs
were calculated for each house and details are reported in [7].
Here we can summarise that we have subdivided all the house
units in 4 categories distinguished in terms of building and
housing density:
x AA: high Building density (buildings/kmq>100) and
high Housing for building (H/building>4.5)
x AB high Building density (Buildings/kmq>100) and
low Housing for building (H/builging<4.5)
x BA low Building density (Buildings/kmq<100) and
high Housing for building (H/builging>4.5)
x BB low Building density (Buildings/kmq<100) and
low Housing for building (H/builging<4.5, example
of rural communities).
From [7] it results the following average costs for fiber
deployment for each housing unit in Euro for the primary
network (from central office to cabinet): AA=120,
AB=170, BA=200, BB=300. Conversely for the secondary
network (from cabinet to the building) we have: AA=332,
AB=457, BA=658, BB=1492. The average cost for
vertical fiber installation (to pass from FTTB to FTTH) is
supposed equal to 250 for each housing unit.
In fig. 1 we report the costs starting from the case of all FTTC
deployment (5.9 B) and considering the transformation from
FTTC to FTTB and FTTH with progressive implementations
from the areas with the highest building and housing density,
i.e. from AA to AB, BA, BB. Clearly the rate growth
increases approaching to 100% since the costs in the case of
low density of building and housing are higher.
Fig. 1: Costs for FTTB and FTTH cases.
According to this analysis in terms of distance from the
Cabinet and number of twisted pair for cable, and considering
the VDSL performance reported in [8], the conditions for EU
Digital Agenda 2020 (30 Mb/s at all and 100 Mb/s at 50% of
the population) would be reached with a total cost of 6.5 B
by adopting Vectoring technique that would permit to achieve
100 Mb/s by adopting most of twisted pair links between
cabinet and house. However such an approach would require
a strong cooperation among operators with actions and
solutions described in [9], that could be difficult to be applied
in absence of a specific normative. Conversely by avoiding
the Vectoring solution the number of useful twisted pair links
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for 100 Mb/s would be much reduced with a consequent
necessity of a much higher number of FTTB installations and
with a consequent higher cost (about 10 B).
3. L'Aquila case
After this general investigation the analysis was dedicated to
the specific case of LAquila considering two different
algorithm approaches: a) Traveller Salesman and b) Ring and
Tree.
3.1. Traveller-Salesman approach
To perform our design, we take the 2953 Distribution Point
(DP) of the old copper network and the 85 street cabinet as
fixed points because their location perfectly reflects the
distribution of users inside the city.
Since one of the main objectives of our NGAN design
consists in the minimization of deployment costs, we consider
the minimization of paths as the most important strategy to
achieve such result. In our architecture we consider two
splitting levels, i.e. each optical fiber starting from the Central
Office is splitted twice and serves a maximum of 64 housing
units (i.e. total splitting factor = 64). Such configuration
guarantees an adequate level of network flexibility.
The yellow line in Fig. 2 represents the border of the served
area in LAquila and it is enclosed in a 3.6x2.4 km2 rectangle.
Fig. 2: the interested area for the NGAN project in L'Aquila .
To design the footprint of the secondary network, the
minimum spanning tree connecting all nodes (DPs) belonging
to each cabinet has been calculated. For this reason, all the
reciprocal distances have been calculated by mean of
Googles map API creating the adjacencies matrix. The
distances were calculated over pedestrian paths.
The primary network is designed for the reuse of an Optical
Ring (OR) surrounding the city of LAquila. The OR counts
31 Point of Presence (POP) and it ensures the shortest path to
connect the cabinets to the CO. The ring topology also
provides redundancy. To increase the robustness against
faults, cabinets are grouped by 8 and in their turn are
connected by a local ring to the closest ORs POP. The
grouping of cabinets and DP in the shortest configuration is a
complex problem and the possible configurations are more
than 7.6 billion (as the binomial coefficient with n=85+31 and
k=9). The problem is also known as the determination of a
Hamiltonian path (or traceable path) and the solution has been
implemented with the '-TSP ('-Traveller Salesman Problem)
algorithm.
Simulation performed to find the shortest routes over four
different topologies for the primary network provided the
following results: a) 49.1 km of length for cabs grouped by 8
and connected in ring network to the Metropolitan optical
ring providing redundancy & protection; b) 109,5 km of
length if cabs are connected to the legacy CO (the legacy
Telecom Italias CO) each one by an individual and dedicated
link (without redundancy & protection); c) 21.3 km if Cabs
are connected in a single minimum spanning tree (without
redundancy and protection) and d) 49.5 km if Cabs are
grouped by 8 and connected via optical rings to the legacy
CO (assuring redundancy & protection). In our work, the
topology a) has been selected because its shortest length
assuring redundancy of paths and protection against fault.
The secondary network length is equal to km 138.5 so the the
primary network length is about 26% of total length,
nevertheless, the Secondary network represents more then
79% of the total cost. Simulation results show that the per unit
cost is of each passed household is about 386.5 while the
cost of the last network segment (the vertical segment) is
variable in dependence of the number of units per building. A
simple estimation executed in compliance to the criteria
contained in Guidelines for the set up of optic fiber
connections within the buildings issued on 09/06/13
provided an average cost of about 410.
3.2. Ring and Tree
Another approach presented in this study is a greenfield
approach based on a ring and tree (i.e., a PON with either a
FTTH or a FTTdP architecture). In this scenario Optical Line
Terminals (OLTs) are colocated with the optical nodes of
LAquilas fiber-optic ring (http://incipict.univaq.it/it/) and
remote nodes (RM) are colocated with a subset of the current
access network cabinets. A second level of splitting is also
considered in correspondence of a subset of the current
distribution points. To assign users located in buildings to
OLTs, cabinets and buildings are first geocoded. Then,
buildings are clustered based on their vicinity and on the
maximum number of users allowed for a single OLT.
Clusters are finally assigned to a RN based on the cluster
center of mass, whose computation is based on both distance
and number of users per building.
The first phase of the PON planning is the PON design,
that includes the geocoding of all the current elements of the
access network, the clustering of the end users to be served by
the same PON, and the choice of the PON architecture.
Geocoding transforms the human-readable addresses of the
existing central office, optical access nodes, cabinets, and
distribution points into coordinates. This procedure allows
executing mathematical operations such as the calculation of
the distances between buildings. A Java Script based on
Google Maps APIs is utilized for this purpose. After
geocoding, user clustering is performed through the same
decreasing distance from the point with coordinates (latitude:
0, longitude: 0). Starting from the first optical access node in
the list, housing units are assigned (i.e., clustered) to it until a
number of 128 housing units is reached. The same procedure
is performed for the other optical access nodes in the list. As a
result, the 2688 housing units belonging to 139 buildings in
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the historical downtown of the city of LAquila are clustered
into 21 clusters. Finally, the FTTH PON architecture is chosen
by assigning a location to the OLTs, the Remote Nodes (RNs)
and the Optical Network Units (ONUs). Since a FTTH
architecture is considered, one ONU is placed in each housing
unit. The central office is connected via the INCIPCTs fiber-
optic ring to the optical access node, where the OLT is placed.
Remote nodes are placed in correspondence of the existing
cabinets which are closer to the centers of mass of the clusters
and in each existing distribution point. Therefore, the splitting
is done at the RN/cabinet and at the DP, as shown in Figure 3
(a).
Figure 3 FTTH with ICIPCTs fiber-optic ring.
In this way, only one RN for each cluster is required in
addition to the RNs at the distribution points, for a total of 21
RNs for covering the entire downtown area. In order to
interconnect OLTs, RNs, and ONUs, new cable ducts between
the chosen RN and the DPs originally connected with other
cabinets must be built. Finally, the housing units are connected
to the DP via a vertical optical network (not considered). In
this case we obtain that 160 splitters and 21 km of new cable
ducts are required to serve all the housing units.
The second design approach performs the clustering so as
to maximize the reuse of existent cable ducts. Each building is
therefore assigned to the current serving cabinet for the
traditional network where a RN is installed.
Cabinets are then assigned to the nearest optical access
node until this reaches a number of 128 served housing units
in order to form a cluster. In this way all the housing units in
the scenario are divided into 23 clusters. We interconnect all
the RN/cabinets in the cluster with the corresponding optical
access node so as to form a cascade as shown in Figure 3 (b).
In this way, cable ducts connecting buildings to the cabinets
are preserved and just new ducts interconnecting the cabinets
are required. This approach reduces the amount of new cable
ducts to less than 1 km but, as a drawback, it requires a larger
amount of cabinets, namely 42, and consequently 181 optical
splitters.
4. PON design and novel solutions for
L'Aquila case
The second phase of the planning consists in selecting a
suitable technological solution and equipment set for the PON.
The project ROAD-NGN studied and proposed multiple
technological solutions to implement the PON system,
exploiting various optical transmission and multiplexing
techniques, selecting between TDM, WDM and OFDM [10].
The target for all the solutions was to provide direct access
from all the Other Licensed Operators (OLOs) by sharing the
network in unbundling to each possible user, so as to
guarantee full reachability, as well as the freedom of changing
their OLO to all users. All the technical details of the
proposed ROAD-NGN solutions can be found in [11].
The main features of the technical solutions considered are
the following:
- TWDM PON: coarse-WDM [12] is used for unbundling;
each OLO is assigned a pair of wavelengths, thus extending
the NG2 standard TWDM architecture; each OLO
wavelengths is shared by its subscribers using standard TDM.
Either all splitters or a combination of splitter and AWG
(mixed) can be used at cabinet and box.
- Ultra-Dense WDM: thanks to the use of coherent optical
transmission, the solution proposed in [13] allows each ONU
to be assigned a pair of dedicated wavelengths. The narrow
spectral separation of channels allows to connect up to 128
ONUs. Also this case comes with an all-splitter and an all-
AWG solutions.
- OFDM PON: OFDM is used to share the PON. As in
[14], two solutions have been proposed: Electric OFDM, in
which all carriers are generated electronically in the RF
domain; FDMA, in which the quasi-orthogonal tributaries
are generated optically.
5. POWER-BUDGET COMPARISON OF ROAD-NGN
SOLUTIONS
The ROAD-NGN technological implementations of
unbundled PON have been compared by power budget
calculation, assuming as a case-study scenario the centre of the
city of lAquila.
Figure 4. Average values of the power-budget system margin: the values are
obtained by averaging the results related to all the PONs needed to reach
residential users of the lAquila historic center.
The tool specifically developed for that purpose was fed with
the input data describing the positions of PON OLTs, cabinets,
distribution boxes and homes, the latter grouped in clusters of
128 ONUs each. All link lengths are assumed from the
geolocalization study presented in Sec. 3.2. As for the
operators sharing the infrastructure in unbundling, each ONU
is assigned randomly to one of four operators with
probabilities reflecting the market shares of the main fixed-
access Italian providers.
Results (shown in Fig. 4) indicate that the UDWDM solution
has a superior power-budget performance, thanks to coherent
transmission, while OFDM in the FDMA version in many
cases is not adoptable (negative upstream margin). TWDM
solutions are intermediate. However, it should be noted that
this comparison is purely technical and does not consider
costs.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge financial support from the Italian Government
through ROAD-NGN project (PRIN 2010-2011).
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