Traffic engineering mechanisms for broadband convergence services in passive optical networks

Abstract

It is widely believed that Internet Protocol (IP) provides the only convergence layer in the global and ubiquitous Internet. Above the IP layer, a great variety of IP-centric multimedia applications have been being developed for broadcasting and telecommunication convergence services, called Triple-Play Service (TPS) including high definition IP broadcast video, bi-directional voice. As a result, ever large link band-width is required in every network domain, while guaranteeing controllable quality of service (QoS) in terms of the delay, throughput, and jitter becomes the fundamental capability of network elements. Due to the successful evolution of wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) technology, the link capacity is sufficient to support the convergence services in the backbone and metro networks. However, the ``first mile`` and ``last mile`` networks are still bottlenecks between high speed local area networks (LANs) and metro networks. Even though market prevailing solutions such as digital subscriber line (DSL) and cable modem (CM) networks have evolved continuously, the network deployment area and link speed are restricted by the natures of physical medium. Optical access networks aim to achieve the optimal network design, network engineering, and traffic engineering with using optical transmission technologies in order to effectively support IP-centric TPS services comparable cost to DSL. In so many solutions, passive optical networks (PONs) are believed to be the ultimate solutions because of the economical advantages achieved by fiber-sharing architecture and the flexibility in network deployment and evolution. The PONs can be categorized into time-division-multiplexed PONs (TDM-PONs) and wavelength division multiplexed PONs (WDM-PONs) based on the the logical link multiplexing method. However, the unique technological natures of both types of PONs affect the performances of TPS independent of the economical merits and the superiority of optical tra...