Performance Analysis of MAC Protocol for EPON Using OPNET

Abstract

An Ethernet PON (Passive Optical Network) is an economical and efficient access network that has received significant research attention in recent years. A MAC (Media Access Control) protocol of the PON, the next generation access network, is based primarily on TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access). In this paper, we addressed the problem of a dynamic bandwidth allocation in QoS (Quality-of-Service) based Ethernet PONs. We augmented the bandwidth allocation algorithms to support QoS in a differentiated service framework. Our differentiated bandwidth guarantee allocation (DBGA) algorithm allocates effectively and fairly the bandwidths between end-users. Moreover, we showed that a DBGA algorithm that perform weighted bandwidth allocation for high priority packets results in a better performance in terms of average and maximum packet delay, as well as the network throughput compared with some other dynamic allocation algorithms. We used the simulation to study the performance and validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.