Planning a urban Radio over Fibre network

In order to reduce the costs associated with network planning, this paper presents a tool tailored for Radio over Fibre networks that: determines the location of antennas to cover a Manhattan like scenario considering candidate sites at different heights, for example on top of building or on street lamp posts; defines the number and location of optical splitters; determines the amount of fibre required for the deployment; and defines the path that reduces conduit usage. In this paper, we also describe the algorithms developed for this tool, including an algorithm to divide the deployment area, an algorithm to define the location of the optical splitters and a modified Dijkstra´s algorithm to find the shortest path that also reduces the amount of conduits. The main outcomes of a study comprising different scenarios are that there is no significant fibre savings from supporting more than 10 antennas per optical splitter and that the modified Dijkstra´s algorithm allows saving more than 20% in length of conduits.