Author : Ali Hammadi, Ravinder Talwar, and Hari Singh

FTTH has been globally adopted by many countries all over the world to overcome many limitations appeared in the copper and wireless access network. The design of the access network in terms of topology and technology deployed is of premium importance as it impacts on the overall efficiency, per user rate, cost, distance reach, scalability, and energy consumption. These challenges have led many researches and industries to explore and intensively study alternative designs based on optical passive devices to provide scalable, low cost, long distance reach, energy efficient, and high-speed networks. The work in this article provides a review on the world status and progress to date on optical Fiber to the Home deployment. A case study on Kuwait FTTH deployment covering conceptual design, cable network distribution, technologies adopted, protocols, acceptance test procedure, and commissioning of service. The work covers methodologies applied by system designers to compute power budget and transmission efficiency for the proper selection of the type of ONTs and OLTs transceivers with respect to the distance need to be covered, operating wavelengths, splitting ratios, minimum transmit power required and detector’s receiving sensitivity. A thorough guideline with steps in testing procedure is provided to verify compliance with ITU and vender’s specifications of the commissioned work. Optical Time Domain Reflector results are presented and analyzed to verify compliance of commissioned network with the standards set by ITU for segments of the deployed network.

Keywords: Fiber to the Home (FTTH), Access Networks, Passive Optical Networks (PONs), Optical Power Budget, Energy Efficiency, Optical Time Domain Reflector (OTDR)

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.7, No.4 (Aug-2017)