Design Of Passive Optically-Powered Fronthaul Networks: The Multi-Splitter Case

Passive Optical Networks are essential in satisfying the increasing demands of high-speed telecommunications, particularly with the emergence of bandwidth-intensive applications and services. This paper focuses on the deployment of the fronthaul network components, which are crucial for Centralized/Cloud Radio Access Networks. The challenge addressed in this paper is how to efficiently deploy optical fronthaul networks amidst infrastructure density by exploring the use of Power over Fiber technology to meet the power requirements of Radio Units. In this paper, we focus on multi-splitter placement, which builds on our previous work [1], where we addressed the same problem for single-splitter placement. The paper demonstrates that optimal multi-splitter placement is NP-hard and leverages the power of integer linear programming (ILP) as a robust computational tool. To cope with the intractability of ILP for large networks, the paper also presents heuristic approaches for cost minimization. Numerical results indicate that the suggested heuristic approach can find a solution within a short timeframe with only a small increase in cost, up to 5.5% over the optimal solution cost.