March-April 2023 - 41

IT/COMMUNICATIONS
provider architecture for bringing
connectivity to cities and subdivisions.
Over the past few decades, this
approach has made its way into enterprise
LAN environments, with particular
advantages for airports.
" In an airport, I can eat, shop, and
catch a flight - it's like a little city
within itself, " said Al Lyons, director
of IT and electronic systems for
HOK, a global design, architecture,
engineering and planning firm that
designs airport terminals and transportation
hubs. " Many airports have built
several separate networks over the past
50 years to support a wide range of
systems, but there are advantages to
moving them all over to one passive
optical LAN. "
A passive optical LAN comprises
centrally managed optical line terminals
(OLTs) connecting to optical
network terminals (ONTs) throughout
an airport using single-mode fiber
optic cable and passive optical splitters.
Each ONT offers multiple network
ports to connect and power devices.
With fiber's distance and bandwidth
capabilities, a passive optical LAN
can span 20 kilometers (12.5 miles)
or more between OLTs and ONTs,
eliminating the need to deploy multiple
traditional IT spaces with switches,
power, and cooling throughout the
airport headhouse and concourses.
" A passive optical LAN represents
huge savings in terms of equipment,
hard construction costs, space and
energy with no need to build out multiple
IT spaces that occupy expensive
real estate and require active equipment,
power and cooling, " Lyons said.
Airport owners, operators and
airlines also need to have confidence
in the technology. For one major
international airport upgrade, HOK
and leading IT services provider
ConvergeOne allocated six months
during the construction schedule to
build an off-site test facility where
they converged multiple systems
over a passive optical LAN to prove
its feasibility.
" We were able to demonstrate that
a passive optical LAN can handle different
services from multiple providers
and allocate different speeds for different
tenants, " explained Nick Vermeer,
solutions architect for ConvergeOne.
During upgrades, airport terminals
must remain fully functional for
passengers. The fiber comprising a
passive optical LAN can handle relatively
harsh environments, allowing
the network to traverse construction
areas and be deployed early during a
project to transition over various networks
and services.
Operating with Resiliency
and Reliability
While a passive optical LAN reduces
the need for IT spaces in terminals,
airports also demand faultless connectivity
with the highest network
availability and security levels to
maintain real-time services. In a
passive optical LAN, ONTs have no
local user interface and do not store
information locally. Instead, they
are controlled and configured by
the OLTs, eliminating thousands of
unsecure touch points on the network
and preventing misconfigurations.
" In a traditional network, we have
to configure secure encrypted links
to devices and between switches,
which requires expensive, sophisticated
orchestration software. With
a passive optical LAN with built-in
encryption between OLTs and ONTs,
you just enable it in the centralized
management platform, " said Vermeer.
Unique to Tellabs OLTs deployed
at several major U.S. airports, builtin
monitoring within an OLT also
improves resiliency by monitoring
for failures of card-level components,
memory faults, traffic and
communication.
" We prefer to design airport networks
with OLTs that offers builtin
monitoring and fail-over. This
capability allows us to service every
splitter feed by a different OLT card
- similar to connecting copper cabling
to separate switches in a traditional
architecture but with much better
and cost-effective protection, " said
Vermeer. " With a centralized management
platform, we can also visualize
the entire network from one location,
which significantly eases maintenance
rather than the 'let's find the bad
switch hunt' that is all too common
with traditional networks. "
Passive optical LANs also deliver
higher levels of resiliency for airports
using standards-based protection with
geographically dispersed OLTs, dual
splitter feeds and fiber route diversity
for complete redundancy. Referred to
as Dual-Parented Type B PON protection
in ITU-TG.984.1 standards,
this configuration connects the two
feeds from each splitter to separately
located OLTs. If one ONT is rendered
out of service, the other takes control.
The system's design can also use a
diversification approach where certain
ONTs connect to separate splitters
based on location and application.
Delivering Sustainability
for the Future
" With a passive optical LAN, space
and energy savings can be quantified.
Right off the top, it eliminates
a sizable portion of IT space that
house large stacks of power-hungry
active equipment, which also all
requires cooling, " said Joel Fischer,
sales engineer for Tellabs. " With one
small hybrid copper-fiber cable to
ONTs that provides multiple ports,
rather than running traditional large
copper cables to every port, the overall
amount of pathway space and material
that comprises the technology infrastructure
is also significantly reduced. "
Passive optical LANs deployed at
airports around the country are now
supporting everything from the latest
ticketing, baggage and gate management
systems to security, signage,
paging, retail point of sale, Wi-Fi
and passenger entertainment. The
future-proof and sustainable nature of
passive optical LANs also facilitates the
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