OPTIMISATION OF PASSIVE OPTICAL NETWORKS

摘要

The present invention relates to communications network design, and in particular the use of passive optical networks (PONs) for optimising an existing large network infrastructure such as a backhaul network. The present invention provides a computer implemented method of designing a PON based network, the method comprising: receiving data representing a plurality of network nodes having cable interconnection routes; determining a combination of core nodes from the network nodes, the core nodes being selected by allocating a combined cost to a series of core node combinations and selecting the lowest combined cost core node combination, the combined cost of each core node combination comprising a cost allocated for each of a number of core node selection criteria; allocating a number of network nodes to each core node in the selected core node combination; for each core node in the selected core node combination, determining a combination of PONS having respective cable interconnection routes for servicing the respective allocated nodes from the core node, the PONS being selected by allocating a combined cost to a series of PON combinations and selecting the lowest combined cost PON combination, the combined cost of each PON combination comprising a cost allocated to each PON within the respective combination for each of a number of PON selection criteria; and outputting data representing each of the lowest cost PON combinations.