Optical Switching and Networking 10 (2013) 89–99

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Optical Switching and Networking

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Protection cost evaluation of WDM-based next generation optical

access networks
Mozhgan Mahloo a,n, Carmen Mas Machuca b, Jiajia Chen a, Lena Wosinska a
a
Royal Institute of Technology KTH, School of Information and Communication Technology, Isafjordsgatan 22, Electrum 229, 164 40 Kista, Sweden
b
Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o abstract

Available online 20 July 2012
Keywords:
Next generation optical access networks
Wavelength division multiplexing
Passive optical networks
New technologies and advanced network devices make it possible to move towards
high capacity access networks able to satisfy the growing traffic demand. Wavelength
division multiplexing (WDM) is considered as one of the promising technologies for the
next generation access networks since it offers higher bandwidth and longer reach
compared to the current technologies (such as time division multiplexing (TDM) based
networks). However, the migration to a new technology is typically based on an overall
techno-economic study which should assure the network operator that the new
implementation is cost effective and profitable while able to provide the required
services to the users. Another important aspect in the access network design is the
network reliability performance, which can be improved by providing a certain level of
protection for equipment and/or infrastructure with high failure impact ratio in order to
prevent a big number of the users being affected by a single failure. The cost of
protection should be carefully evaluated since providing the backup resources may be
too expensive for a network operator.
In this paper, we investigate the capital and operational expenditures for two next
generation optical access (NGOA) networks based on the WDM technology in dense urban
areas. Three scenarios with different splitting ratios are studied for each technology, with
and without protection. The aim of this work is to investigate the impact of providing
protection on the total cost of NGOA networks. The results show that in the dense urban
areas the fibers and digging costs are highly shared among the end users but still vary
according to the splitting ratios for different scenarios and the fiber layout. It also can be
seen that with a proper fiber layout design, minor extra investment for protection of
NGOA networks can make a significant saving on failure related operational cost and that
operational expenditures depend significantly on the fiber layout.
& 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction networks to provide a high sustainable bandwidth (BW)

The increasing number of internet users and introduc-
tion of the new applications such as HDTV, 3DTV and online
gaming, push service and network providers toward a new
design for the next generation optical access (NGOA)
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: 46 87904075; fax: 46 87904090.
E-mail addresses: mahloo@kth.se (M. Mahloo),
cmas@tum.de (C. Mas Machuca), jiajiac@kth.se (J. Chen),
wosinska@kth.se (L. Wosinska).
per user. Moreover, applications such as Telemedicine that
require an uninterrupted network connection imply an
access network with very high reliability performance. Also
the need to reduce the operational cost of the network
moves operators toward node consolidation, which leads to
the reduction of the central offices (CO).
Consequently, NGOA networks are expected to cover
large areas (i.e., long reach and high client count), while
providing sustainable bandwidth of 1 Gbps and beyond
for each user as well as an acceptable level of the service

1573-4277/$ - see front matter & 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.osn.2012.07.002
90 M. Mahloo et al. / Optical Switching and Networking 10 (2013) 89–99
reliability. Passive optical networks (PONs) are the most
promising candidates for the future of the access
networks due to its simplicity, transparency and low
power consumption. PONs can be based on the TDM,
WDM or a combination of both technologies. We envisage
that in many cases the NGOA networks will be based on
the WDM technology which allows higher capacity per
end user. Also due to the large number of the internet
users, new technologies should support large splitting
ratios, especially in dense urban areas.
The candidate technology considered for NGOA
networks should be feasible to implement and operate from
the cost perspective. Since the cost sharing in access
network is low compared to aggregation and core networks,
cost is an important factor for network providers consider-
ing the limited budget of the residential users. Therefore a
comprehensive cost study is needed before migrating to the
new technologies. Furthermore, future access network relia-
bility performance will be an important issue, because they
will cover large service areas as a result of node consolida-
tion and long reach [1]. Hence the need for the failure
management and protection cannot be ignored. Although
the protection down to every end user is not targeted yet by
network operators due to the high costs, the protection of
some components and/or infrastructure is foreseen so that
the failures with higher user impact are reduced.
Recently a large number of studies have been done
aiming to propose a good candidate for the next generation
of the optical access networks with emphasis on WDM
based technologies [1,3–6]. The main focus is to find an
option supporting high sustainable bandwidth and long
reach, as well as allowing for the increasing number of the
internet users [2,3]. However, different requirements of the
operators and end users as well as the lack of a single
mature technology, prevent the networking society to agree
on a particular technology for the future access networks. A
comprehensive cost study of the proposed technologies
considering the operational and capital expenditures in a
complete scenario together with the infrastructure cost is
an interesting research area that can provide a better view
to network operators and facilitate their migration path
toward suitable NGOA architecture. Therefore, some efforts
have been put on the cost analysis and feasibility of the
new technologies, providing the techno economic study of
the NGOA candidates [7–11]. However, these articles are
typically involved with the assessment of initial investment
needed to set up the network and/or power consumption
[12,13] of access networks candidates while cost for oper-
ating the network is only addressed in the scenarios with
relatively low bitrate per customer and short reach. In this
paper we target truly future proof NGOA networks offering
high bit rate and covering large service areas. Moreover, the
related papers are normally comparing performance of
different technologies, while in this work we are also
examining the effect of different splitting ratios, in the total
cost of ownership for each NGOA candidate as well as
assessing the extra cost of adding protection in each of the
options.
In the cases where a very high dedicated bandwidth
and client count per fiber are desired, there are only a few
NGOA candidates to support these requirements. In this
paper we focus on two types of NGOA networks, namely
ultra-dense WDM (UDWDM) and hybrid TDM/WDM PON
(HPON), to be deployed in dense urban areas. Introduction
of the WDM technology allows for an increase in the
number of end premises per PON and total data rates in
both architectures compared to available optical access
networks such as gigabit-enabled PON (GPON). Adding a
TDM layer on top of the WDM offers a better bandwidth
usage in case of HPON. In UDWDM the second splitting
step supports a higher number of optical network units
(ONUs) per PON compared to pure-WDM architectures,
while still providing separate wavelengths to each ONU.
We investigate three scenarios with different splitting
ratios and number of served buildings per PON to study
both capital and operational expenditures (referred to as
CAPEX and OPEX) associated with deployment and opera-
tion of such networks. Here we provide a comprehensive
cost study for the whole access network from head end
network in the central office to the end user promises,
considering the network life time, network planning and
fiber layout. Moreover the added cost of the protection till
first splitting point is investigated and compared with the
case without any protection.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 describes two variants of NGOA architectures.
Section 3 introduces the scenarios and the fiber layout
considered in this study. Section 4 presents the cost
classification and the values used for the CAPEX and OPEX
calculations. In Section 5, we evaluate the results of the
cost study for different variants of the NGOA in dense
urban areas. Finally, Section 6 gives some conclusions.
2. Next generation optical access networks
The considered NGOA networks are based on the well
known PON architecture (see Fig. 1), which is a passive
point-to-multipoint network where the head-end device
located at the central office (CO) is called the optical line
terminal (OLT), and the device at the user side is referred to
as the optical network unit (ONU). The remaining part of the
network is the fiber infrastructure and the passive compo-
nents at the remote node (RN). The fiber infrastructure
consists of cables with several optical fibers. The optical
fiber interconnecting the OLT with the RN is referred to as
the Feeder Fiber (FF), whereas the optical fiber interconnect-
ing the RN with the user is called Distribution Fiber (DF).
Most of the currently deployed PONs are TDM based having
a power splitter at the RN. A few WDM PONs with a
wavelength demultiplexer (e.g., an array waveguide grating
(AWG)) at the RN are also deployed. PONs are limited by the
Fig. 1. Traditional passive optical network.
 M. Mahloo et al. / Optical Switching and Networking 10 (2013) 89–99 91

Fig. 2. Considered WDM-based NGOA architectures: (a) HPON and (b) UDWDM.

client count per feeder fiber and/or the passive reach Table 1
(distance from CO to the end user). These limitations are Considered architecture options.
overcome by NGOA solutions that can support around 1000
Architecture Number of Number of Number of
clients per FF and up to 100 km theoretical reach. variant AWG output splitter output ONUs per FF
In this study, two NGOA architectures have been ports in RN1 ports in RN2
evaluated: based on the hybrid TDM/WDM passive optical
network (HPON), and based on the ultra-dense WDM HPON 1:40/1:8 40 8 320
HPON 1:40/1:16 40 16 640
passive optical network (UDWDM PON) (see Fig. 2). HPON 1:80/1:16 80 16 1280
UDWDM 1:40/1:8 40 8 320
2.1. Hybrid TDM/WDM passive optical network (HPON) UDWDM 1:80/1:8 80 8 640
UDWDM 1:20/1:32 20 32 640
The considered HPON (shown in Fig. 2(a)) combines
TDM and WDM schemes. The advantage of having WDM is
the increase of the data rate offered to each user; while the
advantage of TDM is its flexibility in bandwidth utilization. 2.2. Ultra-dense WDM passive optical network (UDWDM)
This architecture has a tree topology with the OLT on the
top of the tree. The OLT is connected to the first remote This architecture is able to offer at least 1 Gbps bit rate
node (RN1) that contains a passive wavelength splitter/ per channel over tens of kilometers and thus, it can meet
combiner (e.g., AWG) and its outputs go to the second the requirements of next generation fiber to the building
remote nodes (RN2s). The AWG separates channels so that (FTTB) networks studied in this paper [1]. Each ONU is
only one single wavelength will reach each RN2, so there are assigned its own wavelength channel and is physically
as many RN2s as wavelengths in the WDM signal. Each RN2 separated from other users by means of a virtual point-
is a power splitter with every output going to one of the to-point connection. The architecture has a tree topology
ONUs. The downstream traffic carried by each wavelength is with the OLT on the top of the tree which is connected to a
broadcasted to all the users connected to the same RN2. In first remote node (RN1) that contains a passive waveband
this architecture, the ONUs do not have dedicated wave- splitter/combiner (demultiplexer/multiplexer) based on
lengths since all ONUs connected to the RN2 use the same arrayed waveguide grating (AWG). Each RN1 output port
wavelength and apply TDM technique for the upstream goes to a second remote node (RN2) which includes a
traffic. In order to support high sustainable bandwidth per passive power splitter/combiner. Each RN2 is a power
user, HPON requires 10 G transceivers in both the OLT and splitter with every output going to one of the ONUs. The
the ONU side. Using a 10 G transceiver as well as the need of band splitter divides the whole spectrum received in
managing the TDM makes the ONU complex and expensive its input port into separate wavebands each of which
in this scheme. For this study we compare three different goes to one distinct RN2. One waveband includes several
splitting configurations which are listed in Table 1. wavelengths each of which is assigned to a different ONU.
92 M. Mahloo et al. / Optical Switching and Networking 10 (2013) 89–99

The use of power splitters implies a broadcast and select the Manhattan model [14] so that buildings are grouped
behavior, that is, the signal going through each output of in blocks, which are arranged in an array manner. The
RN1 (i.e. each input of RN2) is broadcasted to all ONUs Manhattan model is a proper geometric model to be
connected to RN2, so that each ONU has to ultimately select considered in dense urban areas since it is well mapped
its assigned wavelength from the received waveband. into some highly populated areas in big European cities
Furthermore, we take into account wavelength chan- such as the Eixample district in Barcelona.
nel capacity of 1 Gbps in order to support the required We assume blocks with 8 buildings on each side, i.e. 32
data rate per user. For this study, three different splitting buildings per block. Based on the technological reach
ratios have been considered, each of them differing on limitation for each architecture [3], the maximum num-
maximum reach and therefore, on number of covered ber of blocks that can be covered by one central office can
users by a single CO (see Table 1). be computed using formula (1) where maxReach is the
maximum reach for a given technology and splitting
2.3. Protection scheme ratios [15], Blocksize (see Table 3) is the length of one
block in kilometer, Vblock and Hblock denote the number of
The feeder fiber and the RN1 are the parts of the vertical and horizontal blocks respectively. As an example,
network with the highest impact of a single failure affecting if we consider a service area depicted in Fig. 4, the longest
a very big number of supported connections (from 320 to dashed line in the outer border of the area should be
1280 ONUs in our studies). The failure rate of RN1 is much equal or less than the maximum reach, with Hblock equal
lower than FF and therefore, the considered protection is to 5 and Vblock/2 equal to 3.
based on adding a second disjoint FF. In the protection
scheme, 2:N AWG replaces 1:N one to support both work- max Reach V
4ðHblock þ block Þ ð1Þ
ing and protection FFs (as depicted in Fig. 3). Furthermore, Blocksize 2
an optical switch is also required at the OLT side to connect
the line card to the FFs. The rest of the network is identical
for protected and unprotected schemes. Table 2
Architectures main characteristic [15].
3. Network scenarios and proposed fiber layouts
Architecture option Max reach Area Number of
[km] [Hblock  Vblock] ONUs
In this study we evaluate the cost and energy con-
sumption of the aforementioned NGOA architectures in a HPON 1:40/1:8 38 200  170 1088.000
dense urban scenario. The maximum reach of each variant HPON 1:40/1:16 16 100  70 224.000
is presented in Table 2. It can be observed that the HPON 1:80/1:16 16 100  70 224.000
UDWDM 1:40/1:8 59 200  300 1920.000
maximum reach is limited by the splitting ratio of the
UDWDM 1:80/1:8 48 200  260 1664.000
second remote node since it is broadcasting the signal to UDWDM 1:20/1:32 27 200  100 640.000
all the output ports. The considered scenario is based on

Fig. 3. Considered NGOA network architectures without and with protection.

 M. Mahloo et al. / Optical Switching and Networking 10 (2013) 89–99 93

Then number of ONUs is calculated by multiplying the layout has been proposed that minimizes the FF length.
total number of blocks in the area by 32, which is equal to The working FF (i.e. FFw) interconnecting the OLT and RN1
the number of buildings covered by this CO. The max- through the shortest path is depicted as a solid line. The
imum covered area in terms of blocks (Vblock  Hblock) and FF protection (i.e., FFp) uses a disjoint duct (depicted as
number of ONUs are listed in Table 2 for each particular tick dashed line) which just requires connecting existing
architecture. dark fiber (or pumping fiber when no dark fiber is
In the fiber to the building (FTTB) scenarios (with one available) while avoiding any extra trenching. The dis-
ONU per building), optical fiber should reach every single tribution fiber (DF) which connects RN1 to RN2 is
building and therefore, all streets are assumed to have depicted as a dashed dotted line. The last fiber section
one duct containing all required fibers. The fiber path so-called building fiber (BF) interconnects RN2 with each
between CO and each building is divided to three sections, building and is depicted as an arrow line. All three fiber
as shown in Fig. 4. This figure presents as an example, the sections are sharing the trenches that cover all the streets
proposed fiber layout for the HPON and UDWDM 1:40/1:8 in the area. Each circle represents 8 collocated splitters;
variants. Since network operators typically want to offer where each splitter covers one block side in its corner.
protection down to RN1, in our study a protected FF Fig. 5 shows the model for RN1 distribution and FF
layout of all six scenarios used for the calculation of the
number of fibers passing through each street that affects
the OPEX and also the total fiber and trenching length
Table 3 needed to cover the whole service area which is part of
Considered parameters. the CAPEX calculation.
The circles represent one AWG placed in RN1 connected
Parameter Value Unit
to the CO using the working and protection FF (depicted by
Tech. salary 255 $/h solid and dashed line respectively). As explained earlier,
Block size 0.113 Km each RN1 is connecting to a number of splitters located in
Street size 0.02 Km the street crossings. The number of splitters depends on the
Speed 20 km/h
Energy cost 0.1 $/kWh
splitting ratios. The reason of having different fiber layout
Yearly building rental fee 290 $/m2 for various architectures is the number of ONUs per FF that
defines how many blocks can be served by one RN1. As the
Component Cost Power [W] FIT
AWG 1:80 cost 2250$ 0 200 number of ONUs connected to same AWG increases, the
AWG 1:40 cost 1500$ 0 200 density of the circles (RN1) is decreasing for the same size
AWG 1:20 cost 1125$ 0 200 of the area. For example Fig. 5(a) shows the HPON and
Optical switch 1:2 1000$ 0 250 UDWDM 1:40/1:8 scenarios serving 320 buildings per PON
Splitter 1:N 2.5$/port 0 170
Shelf with 20 slots 4860$ 90 0
that is equivalent to 10 blocks. The middle figure depicts
Fiber 160 $/km 0 570/km the UDWDM 1:20/1:32, 1:80/1:8 and HPON 1:40/1:16 FF
Trenching 60000 $/km 0 0 layout. Finally Fig. 5(c) shows the HPON 1:80/1:16 variant.
HPON Line terminal (OLT) 87.5$/building 1.3–2.9 256
UDWDM Line terminal (OLT) 106 $/building 2.3–2.4 256
HPON ONU 175$ 5.5 256 4. Considered cost classification
UDWDM ONU 145$ 5.6 256

For a given dense urban scenario we compare the cost

of the proposed optical access technologies with and
without protection. The costs considered in this compar-
ison are either capital or operational expenditures.

4.1. Capital expenditures (CAPEX)

 Network equipment, which includes the cost of purchas-

ing the required network equipment, based on the
shopping list resulting from the network dimensioning.
 Equipment installation. The installation cost of the com-
ponents forming the access part of the network including
OLT, ONU and devices located in the RNs is considered
for the calculations, which depends on the number of
technicians required for the installation as well as on the
traveling time to the equipment location and the time
required for the installation. This cost varies per country
since the technician salary may differ a lot according to
the area (e.g., much higher in European countries than
most of the Asian countries such as China).
 Network infrastructure. The network dimensioning
Fig. 4. Network model and proposed fiber layout for 1:40/1:8 solutions. and the fiber layout approach shown in the previous
94 M. Mahloo et al. / Optical Switching and Networking 10 (2013) 89–99
Fig. 5. RN1 distribution and feeder fiber layout. (a) HPON and UDWDM 1:40/1:8, (b) UDWDM 1:20/1:32, UDWDM 1:80/1:8 and HPON 1:40/1:16 and (c)
HPON 1:80/1:16.
section result in a number of fibers and cables that
should be installed at each street. Based on that, the
cost of purchasing the cable and the fibers, as well as
the installation cost can be computed. The installation
cost takes into account the number of splices that
should be done, depending on the cable size. Cost of
the trenching to cover the whole area is also a
considerable part of the infrastructure cost considered
in this part of expenses.
4.2. Operational expenditures (OPEX)
 Failure reparation (FR). The FR cost depends on the
number of expected failures in the network during its
operational life. This value depends on the failures in
time (FIT) rate of the installed components. Moreover,
the failure reparation cost also depends on the number
of technicians required for the reparation, and the MTTR
(mean time to repair) for each failure. For simplicity, we
have assumed that the MTTR is the mean value of the
sum of the reparation time of the component and twice
the traveling time to the location of this component,
neglecting the failure diagnosis time.
 Penalties (P) associated with each connection interrup-
tion impact also the cost of a network. This penalty is
usually agreed at the service level agreement (SLA)
between user and service provider. Up to now, this
value is included in SLA only with business users, but
in the future it is expected to be extended to the
residential users. SLA includes the connection avail-
ability time which is related to the allowed connection
interruption time during a defined time period. This
cost depends on the penalty rate PR ($/h), the percen-
tage of business users in the area (in dense urban areas
is much higher than in rural areas), and on the number
of affected users per a given failure. In this study, two
different PRs have been considered: 10 and 100$/h.
Since this scenario is a dense urban area, the percen-
tage of business users is assumed to be 80% and the
average traveling speed is 20 km/h.
 Power consumption. The power consumption asso-
ciated with each active component of the network
can be summed up and multiplied by the power cost in
every year.
 Floor space. Several racks are located in the central
office to place the OLT’s equipment such as line cards,
power supplies, aggregation switches and so on. We
calculate the total CO area by multiplying the number
of the racks needed to serve the number of ONUs
Fig. 6. Rack floor space model [16].
presented in Table 2, with the total floor space needed
for each rack. The total space for each rack is equal to
the sum of the rack’s bottom area (0.6 m  0.3 m) and
enough working space for the technicians in front of it
(0.6 m  1.0 m) shown in Fig. 6. Each rack can place up
to four shelves with 20 slots in each [16]. This study
compares the CO floor space per ONU which is calcu-
lated by dividing the total required CO area for locating
the OLT racks, by the number of buildings covered by
that CO. Having the yearly rental of the central office
we can calculate the cost associated to the CO floor
space and add it to the yearly OPEX per ONU.
5. Cost comparison
The cost comparison comprises capital and operational
expenditures as presented in the following subsections.
The final comparison combines both aspects for a given
network operational time. The cost evaluation considers
the maximum covered area for each particular architec-
ture as given in Table 2 and the input data provided in
Table 3. The values for power consumption and FIT are
directly extracted from [15], while the input for cost are
translated in US dollar unit according to the available cost
figures in [15] which are normalized to the common
baseline of the GPON ONU.
5.1. Capital expenditures (CAPEX)
The capital expenditures (CAPEX) per building for
both protected and unprotected scenarios is presented
in Fig. 7. As described in the previous section, the CAPEX
includes three expenditures: equipment, installation and
 M. Mahloo et al. / Optical Switching and Networking 10 (2013) 89–99
infrastructure cost. The expenses related to the infra-
structure has the highest contribution to CAPEX due to
the fact that trenching cost is so expensive. Furthermore,
the equipment is considerably costly due to the high ONU
price that is not shared, while the rest of expenses are
divided by the number of buildings connected to each
particular component, which depends on the splitting ratio.
Generally the component cost is slightly higher in HPON
compared to the UDWDM caused by the higher price of the
ONU to support TDM capabilities and 10 G transceivers. The
small increase of the equipment cost in the protected case
is introduced by adding the price of the optical switches at
OLT side. Installation cost numbers differs the most among
different variants, which is mostly related to the splitting
ratio of the second remote node (RN2). The higher splitting
ratio in RN2 the less number of splitters needed and
consequently higher cost sharing among buildings.
The infrastructure cost is highly dependent on the
splitting ratio and the fiber layout. Feeder fiber expenses
are the differentiating factor between the various scenarios.
In both architectures the highest fiber related cost corre-
sponds to the 1:40/1:8 case due to the larger supported
area. It also can reflect the influence of AWG placement in
the area. Generally the CAPEX numbers are dependent on
different factors such as number of ONUs per FF, and the
splitting ratio of RN2 which implies higher possible sharing
of the expenses among buildings. It is clear from the figure
that the lowest number is belonging to the UDWDM 1:20/
1:32 supporting 640 users per PON. The added cost of the
protection up to the first level is considerably low in all the
cases, though the numbers are slightly higher in 1:40/1:8
variant of both NGOA architectures, again caused by less
number of ONUs served by one feeder fiber.
5.2. Operational expenditures (OPEX)
As a first step towards the computation of the opera-
tional expenditures, the failure reparation required time
Fig. 7. CAPEX per ONU distribution for protected and unprotected scenarios ($/ONU).
95
as well as the expected connection interruption time per
ONU have been compared in Fig. 8(a) and (b) respectively.
It can be observed that the failures with highest impact on
the reparation time are related to component breakdowns
(especially ONU failures, which are the most frequent ones)
rather than fiber cuts. Differences between unprotected and
protected scenarios regarding the failure reparation (FR)
cost are negligible, which is not the case with regard to
connection interruption times. For this parameter a
significant decrease of connection interruption times for
the protection scenarios from tens of hours per year to a
minute per year can be observed (see Fig. 8(b)). In this graph
it can also be shown that the reason of the high interruption
time for unprotected architectures is the number of fiber
failures due to the fact that a single cable cut affects many
users (compared with the ONU failure which affects only
one single building).
When aiming at comparing operational costs, Fig. 9
shows for each architecture and protection scenario the
failure reparation (FR), penalty, power and floor space
costs per ONU per year. It has to be mentioned that the
penalty rates considered in this study are: 10 and 100 $/h.
It can be seen in Fig. 9 that the highest operational
costs of unprotected networks are the penalty costs due to
failures in the infrastructure. The protection of the feeder
fiber reduces significantly the penalties (around three
orders of magnitude) while almost no changes have been
observed in the other costs. The impact of the FF layout on
the penalty costs can be also observed. Looking at Fig. 5(a)
it can be seen that the FF layout is rather distributed
through all the streets and a fiber cut will surely affect
FF(s) while in Fig. 5(c) only a few streets contain FF cables
and therefore only few cable cuts will involve FF failures.
This difference makes that the penalties of networks with
a distributed FF layout are higher than of architectures
using a more concentrated FF layout (shown in Fig. 5(c)).
The failure reparation costs are slightly higher due to the
increase of amount of fibers and components (i.e., optical
96 M. Mahloo et al. / Optical Switching and Networking 10 (2013) 89–99
Fig. 8. Failure reparation time (a) and connection interruption time per ONU (b) per year [hour/year].
switches) required for protection. Furthermore, the cost of
electrical power consumed by the active equipment is a
considerable part of the OPEX, while there is no power
usage related to the infrastructure. Compared to the other
aspects, floor space has relatively lower contribution to
the OPEX especially for HPON variants. It should be noted
that the OLT for HPON needs less space compared to the
UDWDM PON. The reason is that in UDWDM each build-
ing is served with a separate wavelength which means
one transceiver is needed for each ONU (normally trans-
ceivers array is used instead of individual ones), while in
the case of HPON each wavelength is shared by a number
of ONUs depending on the RN2 splitting ratio. Therefore
the office size needed for the UDWDM is at least twice as
big as the one for HPON, which makes the hybrid PON
more cost effective in the node consolidation scenarios
where the number of the active central offices is reduced.
5.3. Total cost of ownership (TCO)
The total cost per building for a network operational
time of 20 years is shown in Fig. 10. It can be observed
that for unprotected solutions, penalty costs are compar-
able with the infrastructure costs and in some cases (e.g.,
UDWDM or HPON 1:40/1:8) even higher than the total
CAPEX. It should also be mentioned that the penalty cost
differences between various splitting ratios of the same
technology are due to the fiber layout. The splitting ratio
determines the ONU and the RN clustering and therefore,
the number of affected connections per FF and DF varies
with the clustering. The more FFs are grouped, the less FF
failures will occur but with higher impact. This effect can
be seen for example with HPON 1:40/1:8 and HPON 1:80/
1:16. The former has RNs at each vertical street, whereas
in the latter RNs are located at few vertical streets.
Consequently, in HPON 1:80/1:16 FFs are installed only
at these streets leading to much less FFs failures and
hence, lower penalties and less failure reparation than in
HPON 1:40/1:8 (the cables containing FF have higher
number of fibers than the other cables).
Fig. 10 also shows that the impact that infrastructure
failure reparation has on the total cost is rather low. The
reason is that in a dense urban area a large number of
users are covered by few tens of optical cables and hence,
the failure reparation is highly shared. Furthermore,
penalty costs of protected networks are significantly
lower than the unprotected counterparts, which justify
the small investment required to provide protection.
Fig. 11 shows the total cost per ONU for the different
architectures for 20 years. It can be observed that
UDWDM 1:20/1:32 version has the lowest cost except
for the unprotected case where operator is charged by
business users for the service interruption penalty. This is
due to the lower CAPEX and energy consumed per ONU
compared with other architectures. On the other hand,
the unprotected UDWDM 1:20/1:32 has moderate FF
failure probability(FF are laid in some of the vertical
streets) as shown in Fig. 5(b) and therefore, when a
penalty rate is applicable, the cost increases significantly
more than if it had other FF layout with lower failure
reach. This is the case of HPON 1:80/1:16, which has the
lowest amount of FF cables laid in vertical streets and
therefore, it is shown that in unprotected scenarios with
penalty rates applied, it is the least costly option due to
the low number of unprotected FF cable cuts, as explained
previously.
6. Conclusion
This paper has presented a detailed cost comparison of
some most promising next generation optical access
network options with different fiber layouts, considering
 M. Mahloo et al. / Optical Switching and Networking 10 (2013) 89–99 97

Fig. 9. Operational expenditures [$/ONU/year] for unprotected (UP) and FF protected (P) scenarios.

Fig. 10. TCO [$/ONU] for a network operational time of 20 years in logarithmic scale.
98 M. Mahloo et al. / Optical Switching and Networking 10 (2013) 89–99
Fig. 11. TCO per ONU for the different architectures and different penalty rates during 20 years [$/ONU].
both unprotected and protected feeder fiber. The compar-
ison has been performed not only in terms of CAPEX but
also OPEX including failure reparation costs, penalties due
to service disruption, floor space and energy consumption.
It can be concluded that in dense urban areas the CAPEX is
not differing significantly for various NGOA technologies
and their variants, due to the high sharing cost among
users. Generally the 1:40/1:8 configuration of both tech-
nologies has the highest TCO (CAPEX and OPEX), caused by
the less number of client counts per FF. The presented
results show the importance of offering protection of the
feeder fiber in order to significantly decrease the TCO per
ONU when penalties are applied. Another result of this
paper is the influence that the fiber layout (in particular the
FF layout due to its high failure reach) has on the penalty
cost: it can be observed that the less streets containing FF
(i.e., the more concentrated FF layout), the lower the
penalty costs. Moreover it has been shown that for the
proposed fiber layout the increase of investment for offer-
ing protection is a low percentage of the TCO. When no
penalties are considered, the TCO increases less than 2.5%
when offering FF protection while when penalties are
applied, up to 95% of the TCO can be saved. It may justify
the investment for installation of disjoint FF when penalties
are applicable. In this work we used Manhattan model as
starting point to show a general picture about the differ-
ences of the architectures. This study will be extended by
using our geographical network modeling tool to have
more realistic cost comparison in real scenarios.
Acknowledgment
The research leading to these results has received fund-
ing from the European Community’s Seventh Framework
Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement
no. 249025 (OASE).
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