Passive Optical Network design optimization for wireless backhauling

The increasing popularity of converged media services is promoting the deployment of a range of broadband networking technologies aiming at serving the increased bandwidth as well as service portability and user mobility demands. To optimally address the above requirements hybrid access network architectures coupling the benefits of optical (high capacity, robustness) and mobile/wireless networks (extended reach and mobility) are quite promising. In this paper we present the basic steps for converged network design and planning and evaluate algorithms for wireless backhaul optimization based on a PON architecture. Network optimization addresses the capacity requirements per access segment and optical backhaul segment, the physical layer limitations (e.g. power budget) and overall cost (in terms of CAPEX including number of nodes, active ports, civil engineering works etc. and OPEX mainly including real estate and power consumption) by means of both heuristic algorithms and stochastic optimization techniques.