Application And Prospect Of FTTR In Family Scenarios

With the continuous acceleration of the digital transformation process, government departments have proposed to increase the construction of 5G network and gigabit optical network, and promote the coordinated development of "dual gigabit", which has brought about the upgrade of gigabit home broadband. FTTR (Fiber to The Room) technology provides gigabit broadband coverage for the whole house by extending optical fibers to each room of the user. It is one of the technical directions for future gigabit home broadband upgrades.

In the home scenario, an important network application scenario, with the continuous development of gigabit applications such as live video, online education, VR, and ultra-high-definition video, the needs of users are increasing day by day. Therefore, how to build high-quality home gigabit broadband to meet users' demands for high-quality network experience has become one of the key concerns of current operators.

FTTR technology can further upgrade the traditional fiber-to-the-home to fiber-optic access to each room by extending the optical fiber directly to each room of the user. Through the networking method of all-optical transmission, it provides a brand-new Gigabit network coverage solution for the family. . This paper analyzes the network performance parameters of the home scenario in the FTTR networking mode, compares the FTTR technical solution with the traditional home networking technical solution, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each technical solution, in order to provide a reference for the industry.

Status Quo and Problems of Home Network

Through a survey on the user satisfaction of operators in a certain province, we found that among various statistical indicators, the quality of home broadband Internet access is the worst, only 70.25, which is a shortcoming of user perception. Figure 1 shows the results of the user satisfaction survey of operators in a province.

Figure 1. Survey results of operator user satisfaction in a province

It can be seen that users have the lowest satisfaction with the quality of home Internet access. By analyzing the content of user complaints, it is found that nearly 70% of the sample users with bandwidths above 200M account for nearly 70% of the sample, and the mismatch of their home network network is more prominent: 77.1% of the users use Wi-Fi in the 2.4G frequency band, and 53.4% The routers used by most of the users are still single-band, and there is no 5G frequency band. Indoor Wi-Fi speed measurement is far less than the contracted bandwidth, especially for the network coverage of large apartments and villas, problems such as insufficient Wi-Fi bandwidth and poor coverage lead to frequent freezes in broadband services and poor user experience, which has become the main complaint of users. point.

Through the above analysis, we found that the root cause of user complaints was a problem with the home network, which caused the actual broadband speed to fail to meet business requirements. Therefore, providing a high-speed, stable, user-friendly, and easy-to-manage home intranet to improve users' network experience is one of the problems that operators need to solve at present.

Brief Introduction Of FTTR Technical Solution

As a brand-new home intranet networking technology, FTTR provides a solution to the above problems.

The FTTR technical solution is to conduct home networking through the optical fiber medium, deploy the FTTR main gateway in the distribution box or key locations, take the main gateway as the core, and form an FTTR optical network through optical splitters and single-core bidirectional optical fibers. The FTTR master gateway is connected to the OLT in the upstream, and the downstream is connected to multiple slave optical routes through optical fibers and optical splitters. The optical routes support Gigabit Ethernet ports and Wi-Fi 6, and enter each room through optical fibers, enabling wired and wireless home users in each room. Gigabit network coverage. The FTTR technology networking scheme is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. FTTR technology networking scheme

The FTTR technical solution consists of four parts: main gateway, optical routing, optical network, and network management platform. The main gateway is located between the OLT and the optical router. It connects to the OLT through XG(S)-PON or 10G EPON upwards, undertakes gigabit fiber to the home, and provides interfaces to connect the optical routers downwards. The optical route is arranged in each room of the user, upwards is connected to the main gateway through indoor optical fibers, and downwards provides Wi-Fi and GE port access for each terminal to access the Internet. The optical network is composed of optical cables, optical splitters and other components, which together build the infrastructure of the home network. The network management platform is responsible for collecting home network information and summarizing and reporting it, so as to fully realize the operation and maintenance management of the home Gigabit network. Compared with traditional networking technical solutions, FTTR has certain advantages.

Traditional Networking Technology Solutions
Network cable networking solution

The network cable networking solution is to hang multiple networking devices under the gateway network port, network data is transmitted through the network cable, and the user terminal is connected to the networking device to access the Internet.

Power line networking solution

The power line networking scheme is to transmit network signals through the power line carrier, the gateway is connected to the power line adapter, the power line adapter is connected to multiple power line networks through the power line, the network data is transmitted through the power line, and the user terminal is connected to the power line networking equipment to access the Internet.

Wireless networking solution

The wireless networking solution uses Wi-Fi as the access method. Through Wi-Fi relay, Wi-Fi Mesh, etc., the gateway is directly connected to each network, network data is transmitted through Wi-Fi, and user terminals are connected. Network equipment to access the Internet.

Technical Performance Evaluation Of Each Networking Scheme

Test program

The biggest difference between each networking scheme is that the transmission medium is different and the performance of the networking equipment is different. At this stage, the communication signal is finally connected to the user terminal through the networking equipment in the form of Wi-Fi or wired connection. In order to compare the network performance of the above four networking schemes, a test environment is built for each networking scheme to facilitate network performance testing. See Figure 3 for the test topology of each networking scheme.

Figure 3. Test topology of each networking scheme

Analysis Of Test Results

Test each networking scheme according to the test topology diagram, and see Table 1 for the specific network performance test data.

Table 1 Specific network performance test data of each scheme

From Table 1, it can be found that the FTTR networking scheme has great advantages in throughput, transmission distance, etc. The optical fiber medium is a better transmission medium than the network cable, power line, and wireless, the rate attenuation is smaller with distance, and the interference Less, the performance of the optical gateway is better than other solution gateways. Therefore, deploying the FTTR networking solution to the room and using optical fiber as the medium to transmit network signals can bring users a higher-speed network experience.

Comparison of various networking schemes

Compared with traditional home networking solutions, FTTR networking technical solutions have great advantages. By summarizing the technical performance of multiple dimensions, the comprehensive comparison of each networking solution is shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Comprehensive comparison of each networking scheme

 Through comparison, we can see that compared with the traditional networking solution, the FTTR technical solution further improves the transmission performance, networking capability, reliability, controllability, etc. of the home network, and enhances the self-service operation and maintenance of user faults through the network management platform. Application Ability. The technical features and advantages of FTTR help improve the network quality of home users, enhance users' high-quality network experience, and provide an effective infrastructure solution for home intranet construction. The domestic optical communication industry chain is very mature, which provides strong support for the FTTR technical solution. For the existing home broadband users, the FTTR solution can also be iterated on the basis of the original home network wiring by replacing the network equipment to complete the technology. Update upgrade.

End

With the rapid development of information technology, a large number of users have gradually realized the importance of the quality of the home network. Larger in-home bandwidth does not necessarily guarantee a good network experience. Only a stable and reliable home network configuration can effectively guarantee the user's overall network experience. This paper evaluates and analyzes the FTTR technical solution in the home scenario, and compares it with other traditional home networking solutions in terms of throughput, coverage, transmission rate, etc. The results show that the FTTR technical solution has high performance, high reliability, strong Networking capabilities and other characteristics have truly achieved gigabit broadband coverage to every room, enabling users to enjoy high-quality Internet experience and meeting users' gigabit application needs. It is one of the development directions for future home network upgrades.