Powering Costs as Fiber Goes Deeper Into the Loop

As digital loop carrier (DLC) architectures carry fiber deeper and deeper into the local loop to satisfy everincreasing bandwidth demands, techniques and costs for powering these architectures are sometimes ignored. Here, we examine the costs associated with delivering power to nodes where optical-to-electric conversions (O/Es) occur, sometimes referred to as optical network units (ONUs), as different quantities of ONUs are powered from a single power node. The conclusions show that with larger ONUs, which serve greater numbers of customers, tenyear ownership costs for network powering increase when more than ten ONUs are powered from a single power node. Smaller-sized ONUs are different: greater quantities of smaller ONUs may be powered out of a single power node without increasing ten-year operating costs. Finally, when the power supply status monitoring costs are not divided among many ONUs., such as when powering a small quantity, or even one, from a single power node, ownership costs rise.