Dynamic resource allocation for quality of service on a PON with home networks

Abstract

Earlier efforts on optical access concentrated on the design of PONs for the collection and distribution portion of the access network. A possible evolution scenario for these types of access networks could be the SuperPON system. The SuperPON system exploits all possible upgrades of an FSAN APON system. In these networks the optical hardware is very simple, but a media access control protocol is needed for upstream traffic control. Even so, the role of communications is already well established in the office environment, thanks to networking innovations such as the Ethernet LAN. With the development of cheap, affordable broadband communications and the increasing complexity of consumer goods, it seems natural to extend the network into homes. As home area network application ever increases, we consider connectivity between the access network and the home network, which generates multiple traffic, in order to design a MAC protocol over the SuperPON access network with home networks. Global FIFO is quite simple, and allows dynamic upstream bandwidth allocation on the basis of a request-and-permit mechanism on the APON architecture. It has good bandwidth efficiency; however, being cell-based, it does not consider multiple traffic types from home networks. In this article we describe and analyze a new dynamic MAC resource allocation algorithm called multiple queue-FIFO that can achieve good performance under the SuperPON access network in the home network environment.