Overview of FTTx Network

With increasing demand for a more intensive bandwidth, the communication carriers must seek to offer a matured network convergence and enable the revolution of consumer media device interaction. Hence, the advent of FTTx network is of great significance for people around the world. Fiber to the x (FTTx) is a collective term for a variety of optical fiber delivery topologies. The x here can be replaced by such as H for home, B for building, C for curb or even W for wireless, and so on. Compared to traditional optical networks, FTTx is a new trend for a local area network (LAN) application. According to the different termination places, the common FTTx architectures include FTTH, FTTB, FTTP, FTTC and FTTN. This article will introduce these architectures respectively.

FTTH

FTTH (fiber to the home)—Fiber terminates at a box on the outside wall of our home. It provides unprecedented high-speed internet access from a central point directly to individual buildings such as residences, apartment buildings and businesses. In FTTH deployment, families and officers can both utilize the network in an easier way. It certainly becomes one of the fastest growing applications worldwide.

FTTB

FTTB (fiber to the building)—Fiber terminates at the boundary of the building. A fiber cable in FTTB installation goes to a point on a shared property and the other cabling provides the connection to single homes, offices or other spaces. FTTB applications often use active or passive optical networks to distribute signals over a shared fiber optic cable to individual households of offices.

FTTP

FTTP (fiber to the premises)—FTTP is used to encompass FTTH and FTTB deployment or is used to indicate that a particular fiber network includes both homes and small businesses. It is a form of fiber optic communication delivery where an optical fiber runs in an optical distribution network from the central office all the way to the premises occupied by the subscriber. Since FTTP can offer higher speed than any other broadband services, it is available for providing voice, video and data services.

FTTC

FTTC (fiber to the curb)—It is also called fiber to the cabinet. Optical cabling usually terminates in the street cabinet or pole with 300 m of the customer premises. Fiber cables are installed or utilized along the roadside from the central office to home or office. In FTTC deployment, coaxial cable can be used in the last connection between curb and home or office. It replaces old telephone service and would give us high bandwidth, making it possible that movies-on-demand and online multimedia presentation can arrive without noticeable delay.

FTTN

FTTN (fiber to the node)—Fiber terminates in a street cabinet, which may be miles away from the customer premises, with the final connections being copper. One of the main benefits of FTTN is the ability to deliver data over more efficient fiber optic lines, rather than other fiber optic lines with greater speed restriction

Conclusion

FTTx technology plays an important role in providing higher bandwidth for global network. As it has a higher speed, costs less, and carries more capacity than twisted pair conductor or coaxial cables, FTTx is widely used in applications like IPTV, VOIP, RF video, etc. This passage introduces several commonly used technologies in FTTx network., including FTTH, FTTB, FTTP, FTTC and FTTN. Hope you can have a basic understanding of it.