Towards Green Fog-LR-PON Integration for Wireless Backhauls

Abstract

Integrating optical access networks with fog computing combines the high capacity of optical fiber with closer-to-the-edge computing and storage capabilities. Such integration is believed to form a highly capable backhaul that will alleviate network congestions, serve local demands with less energy consumption, and live up to the requirements of tomorrow's access networks and application requirements. This integration however requires reexamining the bandwidth allocation in addition to reconsidering the network architecture itself, which was not designed to support direct edge-to-edge communications. Moreover, the growing demands for energy-efficient access networks also add the requirement for sleep-aware bandwidth allocation and a power-conserving framework. In this paper, we study the offloading performance in a long-reach passive optical network (LR-PON) when the underlying bandwidth allocation is either centralized or decentralized. Moreover, we investigate how offloading can be supported in each paradigm when optical network units (ONUs) go through a cyclic sleep-mode to conserve energy. We consider this paper to be one of the first to look into integrating fog with LR-PONs under a power-conserving framework and examine which allocation paradigm would be fit to carry offloaded traffic with better network performance and energy-efficiency within this new setting.