Fixed-Mobile Convergence Networks for Broadband Wireless Access Services

Abstract

With decrease in the cost of optical fibers and components, passive optical network (PON) draws attention for the next-generation mobile backhaul from industries. PON is a point-to-multipoint optical access network without active components from the residential side to the CO. With bandwidth gain of optical fiber and passive components, PON offers virtually unlimited capacity and low maintenance cost. With the property of collimated light, it can transport bandwidth-intensive applications over 20 km. Among various PONs, Ethernet-based PON (E-PON) is one of the most successfully deployed broadband access solutions carrying existing Ethernet frame and compatible with IEEE 802.3. The inherited benefits PON provides such as wide bandwidth, low cost, and high scalability make EPON more suitable for the mobile mobile backhaul. The rapid growth of broadband Internet and multimedia services for residential and small business customers, on the other hand, IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) emerges to provide the broadband wireless access (BWA) to rural areas where the existing copper-based infrastructures such as T-1/E-1 and DSL is unreachable [66]. With advantages of high transmission rate, cost-effective deployment, and QoS, WiMAX is a viable technology to be used to economically provide the broadband access anywhere [67]. The integration of optical and wireless networks presents a compelling solution for broadband access due to their complementary features of wide bandwidth and user mobility, respectively. Optical fiber technologies can provide broadband access services through the huge bandwidth gain of optical fibers, whereas mobile wireless technology can provide mobility to users. For successful convergence of EPON and WiMAX, there are some technical issues to resolve a transmission scheduling and QoS support in the MAC layer. In particular, the independent scheduling (IS) mechanism to transmit data between EPON and WiMAX can cause performance degradation. As system inte...