Chapter 16 Point-to-Point FTTx Abstract Fiber to the home (FTTH) architectures based on point-to-point fiber deployments are mainstream

in Europe and Middle East because they have been technically and economically viable for a long time, and they have a number of characteristics that make them the preferred choice when technological flexibility over the lifetime of the fiber plant is required or when open access to fiber is required either from a regulatory or business case perspective. This chapter provides an in-depth discussion of the technical challenges and opportunities of point-to-point FTTH networks. 16.1 Introduction While in many parts of the world PON has become the preferred technology for FTTH, installations in Europe and Middle East are mostly based on point-to-point fiber deployments, either for direct connections between subscribers and POPs (points of presence) in real FTTH scenarios or between building switches and POPs in FTTB scenarios. This situation is mainly due to the fact that most of the initial European deployments were made by municipalities (e.g., [1]) and utilities (e.g., [2]) who were effectively working in greenfield scenarios, i.e., they had to invest into civil works which constitutes the dominant part of the cost for deploying FTTH (see Section 16.6), while the cost of fiber is virtually negligible in this context. Furthermore, as discussed below, many of these networks have explicitly been built with the objective of open fiber access which is greatly facilitated by point-to-point fiber deployments. Learning from the experience of these early players and after evaluating the characteristics of point-to-point vs. tree topologies used for PON deployments, more and more alternative service providers (e.g., [3]) and even a number of incumbent service providers (e.g., [4, 5]) have decided in favor of point-to-point fiber deployments. Table 16.1 lists the acronyms used in the remainder of this chapter. ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line BRI Basic rate interface CPE Customer premises equipment DSLAM Digital subscriber line access multiplexer EFM Ethernet in the first mile EPON Ethernet PON (IEEE 802.3ah) FTTB Fiber to the building FTTC Fiber to the curb FTTH Fiber to the home FTTN Fiber to the node FTTx Fiber to the x {B, C, H, N} GPON Gigabit PON (ITU-T G.984) IP Internet protocol IPTV TV service over Internet protocol (IP) ISDN Integrated services digital network MAC Medium access control OAM Operation administration and maintenance

ODF Optical distribution frame ONT Optical network termination OTDR Optical time domain reflectometry PON Passive optical network POP Point of presence RF Radio frequency SDH Synchronous digital hierarchy SONET Synchronous optical network TDM Time division multiplexing TV Television VDSL Very high speed digital subscriber line (latest version is VDSL2) VLAN Virtual local area network WDM Wavelength-division multiplexing

16.2 Fiber Topology vs. Transmission Scheme It is important to make a clear distinction between the topologies used for the deployment of the fibers and the technologies used to transport data over the fibers. The two most widely used topologies are (passive) trees and stars.

 Fiber trees with passive optical splitters in the field are deployed in order to be operated by one of the standardized PON technologies (EPON, GPON, etc.) using TDM-based MAC protocols to control the access of multiple subscribers to the shared feeder fiber. Fiber stars provide dedicated point-to-point fibers between the POP and either the subscriber or a first active aggregation point in the network. As there is a dedicated transparent medium a wide choice of transport technologies is available. All existing point-to-point FTTH deployments use Ethernet (100BASE-BX10 or 1000BASE-BX10) over single-mode single fibers, but this can be mixed with other transmission schemes for business applications (e.g., fiber channel and SONET/SDH), and even with PON technologies by placing the passive splitters into the POPs. Upgrades and modifications of the transmission technology can be performed on a subscriber-by-subscriber basis in the same way as dedicated copper loops were upgraded from analog voice, over ISDN BRI, over ADSL, up to VDSL2. 16.3 Architectural Considerations On the basis of point-to-point fiber deployments various access network architectures can be implemented. The choice of the architectures depends on a large number of criteria, including subscriber densities, requirements for open access, regulatory constraints, business models, required per-customer bitrates, oversubscription factors, availability of fiber infrastructure, and available POP space. Fiber to the Home (FTTH): Each ONT/CPE device at the subscriber premise is connected via a dedicated fiber to a port on a switch in the POP, using 100BASEBX10 or 1000BASE-BX10 transmission (see Section 16.8). Fiber to the Building (FTTB): A switch/DSLAM in the building (typically in the basement) is connected to the POP via a single fiber or a pair of fibers, carrying the aggregated traffic of the building via Gigabit Ethernet or 10-Gigabit Ethernet. The connections between subscribers and the building switch can be fiber or copper based and also use some form of Ethernet transport suited to the medium available in the vertical cabling. In some cases building switches are not individually connected to the POP but are interconnected in a chain or ring structure in order to utilize existing fibers deployed in particular topologies and to save fibers and ports in the POP. Fiber to the Curb (FTTC): A switch/DSLAM, typically in a street cabinet is connected to the POP via a single fiber or a pair of fibers, carrying the aggregated traffic of the neighborhood via Gigabit Ethernet or 10-Gigabit Ethernet. The connections between subscribers and the switch in the street cabinet can be fiber or copper based and use either 100BASE-BX10, 1000BASE-BX10, or VDSL2. This architecture sometimes is also called active Ethernet as it requires active network elements in the field. For the remainder of this chapter we will consider only FTTH deployments because in the long term they are considered the target architecture due to their virtually unlimited

scalability. In an overview article related to FTTH architectures it is shown how the various FTTx concepts have evolved over the past 30 years [6]. 16.4 Deployment Considerations From a civil engineering perspective the topologies for point-to-point fiber deployments are identical to those for PON. From the POP location individual feeder fibers for each subscriber are deployed toward some distribution point in the field typically a splice point either in some underground enclosure or a street cabinet. From this distribution point drop fibers are laid toward each individual household. As fiber densities in the feeder and drop part are very different, often different cabling techniques are employed, depending on the specific circumstances. Cabling techniques include classical cables and blown fiber in microducts. Classical cables can either be directly buried or accommodated in ducts for greater flexibility. In the feeder part deployments can be greatly facilitated not only by existing conventional ducts but by other rights of way, like sewers, tunnels, or other available tubes. Thus, in many cases the higher number of feeder fibers does not pose any major obstacle for point-to-point installations. In the POP the fibers arriving from the outside plant are terminated on an optical distribution frame (ODF) as the fiber management solution which allows to flexibly connect any customer to any port on switches in the POP. Due to the large number of fibers to be handled in a POP the density of such a fiber management solution has to be very high in order to minimize real estate requirements. Figure 16.1 shows a high-density ODF that allows to handle more than 2300 fibers in a single rack. For illustration purposes it is positioned next to a rack with active equipment that can terminate 1152 fibers on individual ports. Take rates in FTTH projects typically take some time to ramp up and usually stay well below 100%. The fiber management allows a ramp up of the number of active ports in sync with the activation of customers. This minimizes the number of unused active network elements in the POP and enables a slow ramp up of the investments. IPTV-based video solutions provide superior features over simple broadcast solutions and have, therefore, become an indespensable part of any triple-play offering. Quite frequently, however, there is a need to provide additional RF video broadcast overlays in order to support existing TV sets in subscribers, households. In tree architectures this is typically accomplished by providing an RF video signal, compatible with cable TV solutions, over an additional wavelength at 1550 nm. In point-to-point fiber installations this can be achieved by two different approaches, depending on the possibilities for fiber installation: In the first approach, an additional fiber per customer is deployed in a tree structure (see Fig. 16.2) and carries only an RF video signal that can be fed into the in house coax distribution network. In this case, the split factors (e.g., 128) exceed those typically used for PONs so that the number of additional feeder fibers is minimized.