2018 International Conference on Information and Communications Technology (ICOIACT)
Design of Land Optical Fiber Backbone
Communication Network in North Sumatera
Yudiansyah, Prita Dewi Mariyam, Arie Pangesti Aji, Novietasari Chisnariandini, Catur Apriono
Departement of Electrical Engineering, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, West Java, Indonesia
yudiansyah61@ui.ac.id, prita.dewi@ui.ac.id, arie.pangesti@ui.ac.id, novietasarichisnariandini61@ui.ac.id, catur@eng.ui.ac.id
Abstract— The demand for high-speed data transmission has
increased significantly in recent years. Therefore, a transmission
backbone connecting among districts is necessary to support
existing backbone network which connect all provincial capitals.
In this study, a fiber optic communication network backbone in
North Sumatera province of Indonesia is designed to support
broadcast connectivity to all districts. North Sumatera is chosen
because it has the largest population in Sumatera. The proposed
network covers 29 districts in North Sumatera with 27 land
routes. Power link and rise time budget for all routes show
acceptable results which below the allowed maximum loss of 32
dB and maximum dispersion time of 350 ps, respectively.
Therefore, the proposed design network is feasible to be
implemented.
Keywords—backbone; district; fiber optic; North Sumatera;
power link budget; rise time budget
I. INTRODUCTION
The need for reliable and high-speed connectivity has
increased rapidly within the last decade, especially in a
developing country like Indonesia. Optical fiber network,
which utilizes data transmission in a speed of light, is one of
the solutions for telecommunication backbone. It has a high
data transmission speed and broadband characteristic [1]. The
reliable guided transmission system in optical fiber networks
allows it to be implemented as a backbone solution for the
existing wireless communication network.
The Indonesian government has targeted the country to be
one of the largest economic countries within the next 20 years.
To achieve it, large scale of infrastructures, such as land road,
power plant and broadband telecommunication network, needs
to be focused for development [2].
Palapa ring is one of the ongoing projects for broadband
telecommunication solution to integrate existing network with
the new network, which is divided into 3 sections: west,
middle, and east [3]. The Palapa Ring project has started to
deploy optical fiber network cable that connects the Indonesian
islands through the seafloor and mainland. It interconnects with
the existing fiber optic backbone that already deployed before
by telecommunication operators. At the end, Palapa Ring is
expected to solve the demand of high-speed data and video
access services, large capacity and high quality in all
Indonesian regions. In 2015, the palapa ring project has been
built for some big rings in Indonesia, but ring 11 which is
connecting from South Sulawesi to Nusa Tenggara Timur has
been unfinished. Related to that issue, an optical fiber link from
Makassar to Maumere as a part of ring 11 was proposed in [6]
using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM)
978-1-5386-0954-5/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
Fig 1. Palapa Ring project coverage [5]
technology. The development of optical fiber network in other
rural area was proposed in [7] that designed LTE backbone in
Sleman city, Yogyakarta. Sumatera, as one of the major islands
in western Indonesia already has an optical fiber backbone
network connecting big cities in all provinces as shown in
Figure 1. It shows that only major cities in Sumatera are
already covered with the existing network. While smaller cities
in rural areas still rely on the other solution like broadband
wireless or satellite networks. An optical fiber backbone
network which is connecting Bandar Lampung and Palembang
cities was designed in [8].
A high-speed optical fiber network to connect rural areas is
proposed in this research, especially North Sumatera province.
North Sumatera has the largest population among all Sumatera
provinces [4]. The proposed design is to optimize the existing
optical fiber backbone to cover rural areas with additional
DWDM technology. North Sumatera province has 33 districts
which have large potential in agricultural and tourism
industries. High speed connectivity within these cities is
necessary to respond with the existing and upcoming high
connectivity demand.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
discusses the system design of optical fiber network in North
Sumatera. It consists of design the optical fiber routes to cover
29 districts in North Sumatera and technical specifications.
Power link budget and rise time budget used to calculate the
effectivity and reliability of the optical network are discussed
in Section III. Finally, section IV concludes this paper.
II. SYSTEM DESIGN
A. Design Topology
Figure 2 shows the proposed network topology. The
transceiver is used at both end of the links and also in every
transit cities for multiplexing purpose. In Medan, the existing
transceiver is added with DWDM MUX / DEMUX Plug-in
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 2018 International Conference on Information and Communications Technology (ICOIACT)

TABLE I. ROUTE DISTRIBUTION

Fiber
FO FO FO FO Distance
Splice Transceiver Splice Transceiver Route Length
FO (km)
Transceiver DWDM
FO
Splice
FO
Transceiver
FO
Splice
FO
Transceiver (km)
FO
Splice
FO
Transceiver
FO
Splice
FO
Transceiver Medan-Lubuk Pakam (1) 31 34
Lubuk Pakam-Sei Rampah (2) 38 42
Sei Rampah – Tebing Tinggi (3) 27 30
Fig 2. Proposed network topology Tebing Tinggi – Limapuluh (4) 46 50
Limapuluh-Kisaran (5) 48 52
Module, for network development to the rural area. A splice Kisaran-Aek Kanopan (6) 65 72
technique is used to joint fiber optic cable because it has low Aek Kanopan-Rantauprapat (7) 72 79
additional loss compared to standard joint connector. A multi Rantauprapat- Kota Pinang (8) 59 65
Limapuluh-Pematang Siantar (9) 52 57
core fiber optic cable is used to cover the capacity demand. Pematang Siantar-Raya (10) 33 36
The optical fiber network route starts from Medan city and Kisaran-Tanjung Balai (11) 26 29
divided into three different routes: Lubuk Pakam, Kabanjahe, Medan - Kabanjahe (12) 80 88
Kabanjahe - Sidikalang (13) 79 87
and Binjai. The routes are designed and connected to other Sidikalang-Dolok Sanggul (14) 89 98
districts based on the shortest distance and follow the existing Sidikalang – Salak (15) 32 35
transportation road. There are 27 routes connecting 29 Dolok Sanggul-Balige (16) 59 65
districts as shown in Figure 3. The detail routes can be seen in Dolok Sanggul-Tarutung (17) 58 64
Tarutung-Sipirok (18) 65 72
Table I. In order to determine the fiber length, 10% tolerance
Sipirok-Padangsidempuan (19) 39 43
is applied in this design [6]. The total distance and total fiber Padangsidempuan - Binanga (20) 83 91
are 1350 km and 1485 km, respectively. Binanga – Sibuhuan (21) 46 50
Sibuhuan-Gunung Tua (22) 13 15
Padangsidempuan-Pandan (23) 80 88
B. Technical Specification Pandan – Sibolga (24) 10 11
The technical parameter for this design is shown on Table Padangsidempuan-Panyabungan (25) 73 80
Medan-Binjai (26) 23 25
II. A data rate of 2 Gbps is considered to cover the capacity Binjai-Stabat (27) 24 27
demand in North Sumatera. This system is designed for digital Total 1350 1485
transmission with Bit Error Rate (BER) of 10 -9 and Non
Return to Zero (NRZ) modulation scheme. A 1550 nm III. POWER LINK AND RISE TIME BUDGET ANAL YSIS
wavelength is chosen because it supports for long range
optical transmission using single mode fiber according to ITU- A. Power Link Budget
T G.655 [9]. An additional margin (M) of 5 dB is considered Equation (1) and (2) are used to find the total link budget of
to anticipate unexpected loss. A transceiver device parameters the system based on the specification of the transceiver [1]. PT
of Finisar FWLF-163234 is considered to be suitable to is the total optical power loss. PS is the optical power from the
achieve the desired parameters in the proposed design [10]. light source. PR is the receiver sensitivity. In equation (2), αT is
Two additional loss parameter are included in this design, i.e. the total loss. αC is the connector loss of 2 dB/connector for all
2 dB/connector and 0.2 dB/splice. routes. αf is the fiber loss of 0.22 dB/km. αS is splicing loss of
0.2 dB/splice. Lsys is the length of the system. Lcab is the
maximal

TABLE II. DESIGN PARAMETER

Parameter Value
Data Rate 2 Gbps
BER 10-9
Modulation NRZ
Wavelength 1550nm
Margin System 5dB
Single Mode : ITU-T G.655
Attenuation 0.22 dB/km
Dispersion 4 ps/(nm.km)
Transceiver : Finisar FWLF-163234
Max. acceptable loss 32 dB
Transmitter Power 4 dBm
Receiver Sensitivity -28 dBm
Transceiver Rise time 160 ps
Spectral Width 0.2 nm
Additional Loss
Connector Attenuation 2 dB/connector
Splice Attenuation 0.2 dB/splice

Fig 3. Proposed Optical Fiber Routes

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TABLE III. POWER LINK LOSS BUDGET TABLE IV. RISE TIME BUDGET

Route tGVD (ps) tsys (ps)

Route Total Loss (dB)
1 27.2 227.90
1 7.48 0.2 16.68 2 33.6 228.75
2 9.24 0.2 18.44 3 24 227.54
3 6.6 0.2 15.80 4 40 229.78
4 11 0.2 20.20 5 41.6 230.07
5 11.44 0.4 20.84 6 57.6 233.49
6 15.84 0.4 25.24 7 63.2 234.93
7 17.38 0.6 26.98 8 52 232.17
8 14.3 0.4 23.70 9 45.6 230.82
9 12.54 0.4 21.94 10 28.8 228.10
10 7.92 0.2 17.12 11 23.2 227.46
11 6.38 0.2 15.58 12 70.4 236.97
12 19.36 0.6 28.96 13 69.6 236.68
13 19.14 0.6 28.74 14 78.4 239.47
14 21.56 0.6 31.16 15 28 228.00
15 7.7 0.2 16.90 16 52 232.17
16 14.3 0.4 23.70 17 51.2 231.99
17 14.08 0.4 23.48 18 57.6 233.49
18 15.84 0.4 25.24 19 34.4 228.87
19 9.46 0.2 18.66 20 72.8 237.70
20 20.02 0.6 29.62 21 40 229.78
21 11 0.2 20.20 22 12 226.59
22 3.3 0 12.30 23 70.4 236.97
23 19.36 0.6 28.96 24 8.8 226.44
24 2.42 0 11.42 25 64 235.15
25 17.6 0.6 27.20 26 20 227.16
26 5.5 5 19.50 27 36.8 229.25
27 10.12 0.2 19.32

length of the fiber optic cable. M is the margin system. The § 1 ·

tmax sys 0.7 * ¨ ¸ (3)
total acceptable loss is 32 dB as mention in Table II. This © BitRate ¹
value is obtained from the difference between the transmitter
power and the receiver sensitivity values. Equation (2) is used L (4)
to calculate the maximum loss of each route. Table III shows
the result of total loss for each route. value is same for all
routes. The power link loss budget for all routes shows tsys ttx 2  tGVD 2  trx 2 (5)
acceptable results which below the allowed maximum loss of
32 dB.
IV. CONCLUSION
(1) In this study, the land optical fiber backbone network has
been designed to cover districts in North Sumatera using
(2) DWDM technology. There are 27 routes to connect 29
districts. Power link and rise time budget for all routes shows
B. Rise Time Budget acceptable results which below the allowed maximum loss of
32 dB and maximum dispersion time of 350 ps, respectively.
The maximum rise time for NRZ modulation is 70% of the Therefore, the proposed design network is feasible to be
bit period. This value can be calculated from the bit rate value implemented.
by using Equation (3). In Equation (3), tmax sys is the maximum
allowed dispersion for NRZ. For bit rate 2 Gbps, the
maximum rise time for NRZ is 350 ps. The group velocity REFERENCES
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