Powering costs as fiber goes deeper into the loop

As digital loop carrier (DLC) architectures carry fiber deeper and deeper into the local loop to satisfy ever-increasing bandwidth demands, techniques and costs for powering there architectures are sometimes ignored. Here, the authors examine the costs associated with delivering power to these O/Es or ONUs as different quantities of ONUs are powered from a single power node. The conclusions show that smaller greater number of smaller ONUs may be powered out of a single power node without increasing ten-year operating costs. Larger ONUs, however, show an increase in ten-year operating cost when more than ten or so are powered with a single power node. Powering a small quantity of any size ONUs from a single power node is expensive since the ten-year costs associated with status monitoring of the power node are not divided among many ONUs.