Infrastructure Cost Savings with Unbalanced PONs in Rural Areas

Deployment of Optical Access Networks (OANs) is still a costly process, specially in rural areas, and thus requires detailed and efficient planning. The deployment strategies in rural areas are subjected to challenges posed by demographic and geographical factors. Traditional Balanced Passive Optical Network (BPON) deployments, using symmetrical splitters, which incurs into an inefficient and costly solution due to the sparse user distribution. To address this issue, this paper presents an Hybrid Passive Optical Network (HPON) solution, which combines BPON and Unbalanced Passive Optical Network (UPON) architectures to provide optimal connectivity and reachability. The HPON leverages optical taps in the UPON for fine-grained power distribution. BPON and HPON models are compared in four rural scenarios with varying population densities. The results suggest that the HPON leads to reduced cost per Optical Network Unit (ONU) and cost per unit area compared to BPON, thus providing a solution for the economical deployment of an OAN in rural areas. In the considered rural areas, HPON assures cost savings of up to 25 % over BPON deployments.