Designing Low Cost Access Networks with IPTV Performance Constraints

In this paper, we propose to tackle the global problem of designing an access network in order to have enough bandwidth to offer high definition television (HDTV) over the Internet protocol (IPTV). Two important access network architectures are considered: the fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) and the fiber- to-the-premises (FTTP) architectures. An integer mathematical programming model is proposed for this network planning problem. Next, a heuristic algorithm based on the tabu search principle is proposed to find "good" feasible solutions within a reasonable amount of computational time. Finally, numerical results are presented and analyzed.