Exploring Energy-Efficient PON Architectures for Rural Scenarios

Contrary to urban areas, optical fiber deployment in rural scenarios is still in early stage due to high investment and low density of customers. Network operators face a competitive environment in the access segment, where they must deliver fast and reliable Internet access, while offering attractive prices to their users. This work analyzes the energy cost of Fiber to the Building (FttB) networks in rural areas planned using Balanced Passive Optical Network (PON) (BaPON), using a fixed symmetric optical splitter such as 1:16/32/64, etc; and a combination of BaPON and Unbalanced PON (UBaPON) with the use of optical taps in a daisy-chain manner, called Hybrid PON (HyPON) architecture. The analysis is based on the Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) and 10-Gigabit-Symmetrical Passive Optical Network (XGS-PON) standards and four rural scenarios in Germany. The annual power consumption of the network designs are computed and the Operational Expenditures (OpEx) of operating the networks for a period of 20 years is estimated. According to the results, HyPON offers total cost savings of up to 25.32 % in the greenfield scenario of the most sparse region, considering continuous active operation, and serves as a potential candidate for rural PON connectivity.