Integrating Fog With Long-Reach PONs From a Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation Perspective

Abstract

Integrating fog computing with optical access networks is believed to form a highly capable fronthaul that will live up to the various requirements and challenges of tomorrow's access networks. Such integration combines the high capacity of optical fiber with closer-to-the-edge computing and storage capabilities. However, because optical access networks were not originally designed to carry offloaded traffic nor support edge-to-edge communications, the network architecture and employed bandwidth allocation both need to be reconsidered in this new setting. In this paper, we study the offloading performance in a long-reach optical access network when the underlying bandwidth allocation is either centralized or decentralized. We investigate how offloading can be supported in each paradigm and develop an analytical framework that is tested against numerical results. The effect of offloading on regular upstream traffic is also examined as well as the effects of cloudlet placements and network extension on the offloading performance.