Wireless Optical Broadband Access Networks

Hybrid wireless-optical broadband access network (WOBAN) is a promising architecture for future access networks. The WOBAN has been gaining increasing attention and early versions of its wireless part are being deployed as municipal access solutions to eliminate the wired drop to every wireless router at customer premises. This architecture saves on network deployment cost because fiber need not penetrate to each end user, and it extends the reach of emerging optical access solutions such as Passive Optical Networks. The WOBAN architecture can be employed to capture the best of both worlds (1) the reliability, robustness, and high capacity of wireline optical communication, and (2) the flexibility (anytime-anywhere approach) and cost savings of a wireless network.

WOBAN ARCHITECTURE
Noting that the dominant optical access technology today is the passive optical network (PON), different PON segments can be supported by a telecom Central Office (CO), with each PON segment radiating away from the CO. The head end of each PON segment is driven by an Optical Line Terminal (OLT), which is located at the CO. The tail end of each PON segment will contain a number of Optical Network Units (ONU), which typically serve end users in a standard PON architecture.

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For the wireless portion of the WOBAN, the ONUs will drive wireless Base Stations (BS) or Access Points (AP). The wireless BSs that are directly connected to the ONUs are known as wireless gateway routers, because they are the gateways of both the optical and the wireless worlds. Besides these gateways, the wireless front end of a WOBAN consists of other wireless routers/BSs to efficiently manage the network. Thus, the front end of a WOBAN is essentially a multi-hop wireless mesh network (WMN) with several wireless routers and a few gateways. The wireless portion of the WOBAN may employ standard technologies such as WiFi or WiMAX. WOBAN is a multi-domain hybrid network. It is essentially an integrated tree mesh architecture. It assumes that an OLT is placed in a telecom central office, and it feeds several ONUs. Thus, from ONU to the CO, WOBAN has a traditional fiber network; and, from ONUs, end users are wirelessly connected (in single-hop or multi-hop fashion). The optical part of WOBAN assumes a tree, while a mesh is envisioned in its front-end wireless part.

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Advantages of WOBAN
1. A WOBAN can be very cost effective compared to a wired network. The architecture shows that it does not require expensive fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connectivity. 2. The wireless part of this architecture allows the users inside the WOBAN to seamlessly connect to one another. The anytime-anywhere approach is also applicable to the WOBAN. WiMAX can be used at front end WOBAN, in which, apart from its flexibility, we can also take advantage of its higher bit rate compared to WiFi.. 3. A WOBAN should be more robust than the traditional wireline network. In a traditional PON, if a fiber connecting the splitter to an ONU breaks, that ONU will be down. Even worse, if a trunk from OLT to the splitter breaks, all the ONUs will fail. But, in a WOBAN, as the users have the ability to form a multi-hop mesh topology. 4. Due to its high-capacity optical trunk, the WOBAN will have much higher capacity than the relatively low capacity of the wireless network. 5. A WOBAN will be more reliable than the wireless network. This, in turn, will help in reducing the problem of congestion and information loss in a WOBAN compared to the current wireless network. 6. The WOBAN is self organizing because of its fault-tolerant capability and because of its robustness with respect to network connectivity and load balancing features.

Placement Algorithms in WOBAN

The network performance largely depends on the deployment of ONUs, i.e., the gateway routers where the optical and wireless parts meet. Proper deployment of ONUs is critical to the cost optimization of WOBAN. To tackle this problem, we review placement algorithms for deploying multiple ONUs in a WOBAN. (1) Random and Deterministic Approach: Random placement of ONUs is the simplest way of deploying the network. This is a trial-and-error method, where after dividing the network into multiple non-overlapping regions, ONUs are sprinkled randomly in each region. This scheme does not return an optimized-cost setup and may not ensure proper connectivity. Deterministic placement, on the other hand, is a predetermined scheme, where after dividing the network into multiple non-overlapping regions,

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ONUs are placed in the centers of each region. Deterministic scheme works well for a symmetric network, and has a much lower processing requirement.. (2) Greedy Approach: The Greedy Algorithm is a divide-and-conquer method to partition the network. The goal of Greedy is to place ONUs in a WOBAN such that the average cost over all users with respect to a neighbourhood ONU is optimized. The algorithm starts with a given distribution of wireless users. These users are primarily in the residential and business premises, so they have little or no mobility. Greedy considers a number of predetermined points as possible initial candidates to place the ONUs. For each user, Greedy forms an ordered set users distances from ONUs as the sets elements. Then, it identifies the primary ONU, which is the closest. (3) Combinational Optimization (Simulating Annealing Algorithm): The Greedy Algorithm is a heuristic, which performs local optimization of an individual ONU after the identification of premium users for that ONU. The solution is not globally optimal. The initial placement of ONUs is obtained by the Greedy Algorithm as in The purpose of this global optimization is to find the minimum average cost for all the users (not only the premium users) with respect to multiple ONUs. So, SA relocates the ONUs with a small random amount (Perturbation Phase of SA). After perturbation, the algorithm calculates the new cost of ONU placement (Cost Calculation Phase of SA) and observes how the new cost of ONU deployment changes with respect to the old cost. If the new cost of deployment is lower, SA accepts the relocation of ONUs; else it accepts the relocation with a certain probability (Acceptance Phase of SA). SA iterates the same process until there is no further cost improvement (Update Phase of SA). Then, the algorithm is said to be in the equilibrium state, where no more perturbation will reduce the cost of deployment any further. (4) Joint Optimization: A joint optimization approach considers the design-interplay between both optical and wireless domains together. A proper pre-deployment optimization strategy can actually save expensive optical and wireless resources needed for this type of network. Thus, a constraint programming model, called Primal Model (PM). PM focuses on the optimum simultaneous placement of BSs and ONUs in the front end, and the fiber layout from BSs to ONUs and from ONUs to OLT/CO in the back end. It explores an analytical model that considers the cost of ONUs and BSs, and the cost of laying fiber. In order for proper operations of WOBAN, PM
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considers several constraints to be satisfied: BS and ONU installation constraints, user assignment constraints, channel assignment constraints, capacity constraints, and signal-quality.

Routing Algorithms in WOBAN

In the downstream direction, from OLT/CO to an ONU (back end optical part), a WOBAN is a broadcast network, and from ONU/gateway to a user (front end wireless part), a WOBAN is a unicast network. In the upstream direction, from a user to a gateway/ONU(front end wireless part), WOBAN is an anycast network, and from ONU to OLT/CO (back end optical part), WOBAN follows the traditional multipoint access control protocol. We will briefly discus the routing algorithms here. (1) Minimum-Hop and Shortest-Path Routing Algorithms (MHRA and SPRA): The minimum-hop routing algorithm (MHRA) and the shortest-path routing algorithm (SPRA) are widely used in the wireless part of a WOBAN (because they are easy to (SPRA) are widely used in the wireless part of a WOBAN (because they are easy to proportional to the link capacity. MHRA and SPRA work on the shortest-path principle without generally considering other traffic demands on the network. Therefore, MHRA and SPRA could suffer from several routing limitations, viz., increased delay, poor load balancing, and high congestion in a link or along a segment. (2) Predictive Throughput Routing Algorithm (PTRA): Recent approaches also consider solution providers patented routing algorithms. Predictive-throughput routing algorithm (PTRA) is one such protocol. We use the name PTRA instead of PWRP in the study because the wording in PTRA is more expressive. Unlike MHRA and SPRA, PTRA is not based on the shortest-path routing principle. PTRA is a link-state based routing scheme, and it chooses the path (from a set of possible paths between a user-gateway pair) that satisfies the overall throughput requirement. PTRA takes measurement samples of link rates periodically across wireless links. PTRA dynamically predicts link condition and then estimates the throughput of each path. (3) Delay-Aware Routing Algorithm: The routing in the wireless part of a WOBAN mesh deals with packets from a router to a gateway (and vice versa). A wireless routing path consists of two parts: (1) the associativity of a user to a nearby wireless router in its footprint, and (2) the path from this (ingress) router to a suitable gateway
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(through the wireless mesh). Delay-aware routing algorithm (DARA) is a proactive routing approach that focuses on the packet delay (latency) in the front end (wireless mesh) of the WOBAN, i.e., the packet delay from the router to the gateway (attached to a ONU) and vice versa. Then, DARA computes the path with the minimum predicted delay from a router to any gateway and vice versa. While traveling upstream/downstream, a router/gateway will send its packet along the computed path only if the predicted delay is below a predetermined threshold, referred to as the delay requirement for the mesh.

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Broadband Access Network

Passive Optical Networks

A passive optical network is a point-to-multipoint optical network with no active element in the signal path between the source and the destination. It is mainly based on optical fiber and a power splitte. The passive elements are located in the distribution network (also called the outside plant) and the active elements at the endpoints of the network. The source endpoint is called the optical line terminal (OLT) and at the receiver side, the endpoint is called Optical Network Unit (ONU). Typically, the PON is deployed in a single fiber tree configuration; the main fiber is called the trunk fiber and the last drop fibers are called the branches.

Fig PON network architecture

Advantages of PON networks are:

(a) It makes use of the total bandwidth available in fibers. It will provide more bandwidth to the customer.

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(b) It allows for longer distances between source and destination than with DSL. Typical PON can operate at distances over 20 km. (c) It minimizes fiber deployment costs. Service providers share their costs of fiber and equipment at the OLT among several subscribers. (d) It reduces the capital expense of outside plants and related operation costs. Maintenance is simplified and is not a critical point. (e) It provides greater flexibility. Service providers can upgrade or add new services by changing only some pieces of equipment at the OLT on a per-customer basis.

Fig different approaches of PON

Design Issues of PONs (a) Frame Format: Different data-link technologies can be used for transmission in
PONs. The final choice of frame format and related protocol will not only depend on the types of services to be delivered, but also on the interfaces with the metro and long-haul area networks. Currently, three formats are in question: asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), Ethernet, and generic framing procedure (GFP).

ATM PON (APON) / Broadband PON (BPON): This is a specified an

architecture with symmetric 155 Mbps upstream and downstream bit rates. The
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original recommendation was improved in 2001 to allow asymmetric 155 Mbps upstream and 622 Mbps downstream transmission. ATM has the advantage of allowing the implementation of various quality of service (QoS) policies and guarantees. It also appears to be a good choice to support real time traffic

Ethernet PON (EPON): Ethernet PON is a PON using Ethernet frames as

defined in the IEEE 802.3 standard. It operates symmetrically at a standard Ethernet speed of 1 Gbps. It is very convenient to carry IP packets via Ethernet frames: the protocol overhead for IP services is very small. The scalability is very high, up to 10 Gbps. Moreover, the hardware is cheap; EPON deployment is a cost-effective solution. Ethernet technology has now become a widely used standard, offering enormous economies of scale.

Gigabit PON (GPON): Being limited by the intrinsic characteristics of the ATM
frame format, the FSAN group decided to adopt GFP, allowing a mix of variablesized frames and ATM cells. It is referred as GPON [59], the ITU G.984 standard. GFP has the advantage of being SONET compatible, enabling service providers to link their voice connection into the PON without adding IP. The requirements include the following: Full service support, including voice (TDM, both SONET and SDH), Ethernet, ATM, etc. Physical reach distance of 20 km, at least. Support for various bit rates using the same protocol, including 622 Mbps, symmetrical 1.25 Gbps, and 2.5 Gbps downstream / 1.25 Gbps upstream. Security at the protocol level for downstream traffic.

(b) MAC Protocol: As a PON is a point-to-multipoint system, when different ONUs

transmit data at the same to avoid this phenomenon and to fairly share the resources among the different users. Two protocols are described here: time division multiplexing (TDM) and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM).

TDM:

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TDM-PONs face many challenges. In particular, end terminals must be accurately synchronized; the clock recovery can be challenging. The prime problems of TDMbased access network are faced in burst mode reception at OLT and synchronization within overhead period of each upstream slot. It seems difficult to easily upgrade and scale these TDM-based optical access networks.

WDM: In such a configuration, WDM makes full use of the large bandwidth of
optical fiber By using different channels, WDM networks are easy to scale and to upgrade. The connection between source and destination is independent of the line rate and of the frame format.

WDM-PONs are still expensive architectures because specific wavelength dependent devices, like dedicated transceivers for each end user, are required. A WDM-PON system also needs filters at the receiver side, which must be tuned very precisely to match the signal to its subscriber

(c) Physical Topology:

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Multi-Wavelength Sources
Tunable sources appeared to have a great interest for WDM communications systems. When speaking about multiwavelength sources, two main categories can be identified: continuous wave and pulsed. sources. Within the pulsed sources, research studies have focused on two types of operation.

Simultaneously: all the wavelengths are contained in each pulse Alternatively : successive pulses are at different wavelengths.

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Laser Arrays: To miniaturize the source, the lasers can be put on the same wafer. The
simplest idea consists of choosing many semiconductor lasers producing different optical wavelengths and then mounting them together to form an array of lasers.

Supercontinuum generation: Another candidate was proposed: supercontinuum

generation. The supercontinumm generation is a phenomenon in which an intense pump optical pulse spectrum is broadened over a continuous range due to non-linear effects in an optical fiber, The generated spectra extend to both longer and shorter wavelengths from the pump wavelength. and can exhibit an almost flat profile by choosing adequate parameters. By using an arrayed-waveguide-grating (AWG), one mode can be extracted, forming CW light for transmission.

MULTIWAVELENGTH

LASER

SOURCES

FOR

BROADBAND OPTICAL ACCESS NETWORKS

To unlock fiber capacity and to increase performances of actual networks, wavelength division multiplexing techniques have been investigated. In this context, multiwavelength fiber ring lasers present many advantages: simple structure, low-cost, and multiwavelength operation. Instead of using many different laser diodes, one simple and agile laser could replace them all. It implies more functions, less cost, less maintenance, and less inventory.

ALTERNATE MULTIWAVELENGTH PULSED FIBER LASER

To generate the alternate multiwavelength emission, two basic operations are needed, pulse generation and wavelength selection. To do so, two different techniques are used: active mode-locking and tunable filtering. The main objective is to produce picosecond pulses at GHz repetition rates in the third telecommunication window, i.e., in the 1550 nm region. Spacing between emitted wavelength should be on the order of some nanometers

Possible Applications
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CDMA: To meet the dual demand for high speed and high security communications, an alternative all-fiber access network technology has been proposed Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). This spread spectrum (SS) technique is frequently used in radio networks.

By emitting successive pulses at different wavelengths, codes associating one time slot with one wavelength can be implemented. The alternate multiwavelength source might enable the implementation of two-dimensional wavelength-time optical CDMA his two-dimensional codes are generally represented by two-dimensional spatial signature patterns.

Photonic analog-to-digital conversion: For real-time data transmission, ultra-high

speed sampling is required. To overcome the electronics bottleneck, multiwavelength pulse trains can be used. The idea is to use the wavelength multiplicity to increase the sampling rate of analog-to-digital converters.

Optical demultiplexing: The multiwavelength source generates alternate pulse trains at

different wavelengths. This laser might be used to demultiplex a signal.
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Fig. Principle of temporal demultiplexing by using a multiwavelength laser

Miscellaneous concepts
(a) UMZI Model to understand practical description of Multiwavelength generation (b) Circulating Gaussian Pulse analysis (c) Time and Spectral domain Control of mutiwavelength emission. (d) Study of continuous wave multiwavelength fiber laser using downstream transmission for WDM-PON.

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