Analysis | Why is the small-capacity industrial-grade PON OLT so popular with operators?

During the construction of the optical access network, the small-capacity industrial-grade PON OLT (Optical Line Terminal) has been favored by many operators due to its small size, light weight, strong environmental adaptability, and low cost. The trend of optical access nodes getting closer to users, diversified deployment scenarios, higher bandwidth provision and wider resources, meets the requirements for cost-effective network construction.

Small-capacity OLT is more applicable to the environment than large/medium-capacity OLT

In network construction, large-capacity OLT and small-capacity OLT have their own emphasis on the selection of industrial-grade PON OLT, and they need to be selected according to the actual situation and network construction mode. The comparative analysis of large/medium capacity OLT and small capacity OLT is shown in Table 1.

Small-capacity OLT has the advantages of more flexible deployment and stronger environmental applicability. It is suitable for scenarios such as limited computer room space, low-density area access, OLT sinking/remote coverage, smart park quick access, and co-location of OLT and mobile base stations. . At the same time, it provides more flexible uplink networking and protection capabilities to ensure business security and efficient business transmission.

The small-capacity OLT can be either a 1U-high Pizza-box type box OLT form or a 2U-high compact OLT form. Box-type OLT is generally a fixed device, the line card is not pluggable, and the cost is low; while the 2U high OLT generally has carrier-class protection, and has good power supply, fan, main control board redundancy and other capabilities.

For areas with low population density, a small-capacity OLT is more suitable, saving backbone optical fiber, pipelines and computer room, power, air conditioning and other infrastructure investment, helping operators save TCO. Combined with optical modules with a large optical power budget (such as Class D optical modules), it can also solve the coverage problem of some users who are far away. In addition, small-capacity OLT is also the preferred solution for small and medium-sized operators. It adopts outdoor integrated configuration to save the cost of equipment room and supporting equipment. It can be applied in various environments with harsh natural conditions to achieve rapid coverage of FTTH networks. In this scenario, the number of users is scarce, and a small-capacity OLT can be deployed flexibly and reduce investment.

Remote area coverage

In some sparsely populated areas, network coverage faces problems. The distance between the central node and the remote node is long, line resources are scarce, and there are many intermediate nodes, many connections, and complex lines. By adopting a small-capacity OLT sinking deployment solution, it can cover many users and has a low cost, which is a cost-effective solution.

In this case, POP points are generally set remotely, and the outdoor integrated configuration is used to deploy a miniaturized OLT, which saves the computer room and supporting costs. Multiple small-capacity OLTs are converged to a large OLT or converged switch in the central computer room. The OLT is configured with 10/40/80km optical modules on demand and connected with Ethernet GE or 10GE interfaces. The OLT uses high-density PON interface boards to cover many users and is suitable for A scenario where the remote end has a certain user scale and business potential. In this scenario, rural users are far away from the central computer room in the city, and the cascaded networking of large-capacity OLT and small-capacity OLT can achieve broadband access in remote areas.