FTTH network design under power budget constraints

Fiber To The Home networks represent an interesting solution to provide a high bandwidth access to customers. To minimize the investment costs, telcos need to efficiently design their networks based on the given criteria such as power budget constraints, network equipment capacities and associated costs. Usually, a network planner starts with a large area within the reach of a central office and divides it into sub-areas to be planned individually. This manual division process is time-consuming and non-optimized which very often leads to a high design cost. This paper proposes a tool based on a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) method that can optimally decide sub-areas while still satisfying given constraints. Each sub-area is served by one fiber cabinet containing the optical splitters. Depending on the distances from customers to the central office and the splitter types being used, the model is capable of identifying customers violating the power budget and assigning them to a splitter with a smaller splitting ratio and longer reach.