Optimal FTTH Ring Design Using VRP Formulations

Abstract

The worldwide rapid growth in technology is encouraging all companies to optimize their resources to deliver the finest product to their customers. As for telecom companies, one of the goals is to design an optimal Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) network and implement it at the lowest cost possible. Optical fibers are the preferred kind of technology used by telecom companies in their networks due to many reasons. This is thanks to the fact that it can transmit data over large distances, with very high bandwidth, less interference, and low cost. Additionally, the Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) is the main technology used in fiber cables to transmit data. This project investigates the creation of GPON ring network providing backup protection for a certain type of customers.

A proposed Integer Linear Programming (ILP) Model is discussed based on a Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) Formulation to create a ring design. This problem has certain similarities with a Heterogenous Fleet Vehicle Routing Problem (HFVRP) variant of a VRP. The input to the model includes the number of customers, their locations, their fiber demand, and the set of different cable types that exist with their capacities and costs. The model finds the optimal number of rings, selects the cable type for each ring and calculates the minimum cost. This is like an HFVRP since it has different capacities of vehicles which are considered as the cables in the problem, and it finds the optimal routes which are the rings. The model was tested on few real networks. The solutions were measured and discussed. A sensitivity analysis has been also conducted to investigate the impact of cable capacities and costs on the objective value and number of rings.

Date of Award	Dec 2022
Original language	American English
Supervisor	Andrei Sleptchenko (Supervisor)