Design and Simulation of a GPON-based FTTH Access Network in a Dense Urban District of Kinshasa: Case Study of Salongo District

The explosion of digital uses (video on demand, teleworking, distance learning) demands bandwidths that 4G mobile infrastructures can no longer guarantee in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This paper presents the design and simulation of an FTTH (Fiber To The Home) access network based on GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) technology in the Salongo district of Kinshasa. A field survey identified 4,000 potential households. The technical sizing resulted in an overall splitting ratio of 1:128 (1:16 at optical branch points and 1:8 at zone distribution points), requiring 1 ODF, 32 ZDPs, 250 OBPs, and 4,000 OTUs. The optical link budget, validated by OptiSystem simulation, estimated a total attenuation of 27.95 dB, which is within the Class B+ optical budget (28 dB), with a safety margin of 3.05 dB. The results confirm the technical feasibility of the deployment and its ability to provide downstream speeds up to 2.5 Gbit/s, thus meeting the requirements of Triple play services.