The objective of this research is to develop and demonstrate critical elements necessary for the integration of passive optical network (PON) broadband access technologies with "Fourth Generation" (4G) mobile wireless broadband access technologies. The approach is to devise and analyze an Ethernet-based multiservice network architecture that spans and integrates fiber-based PON and 4G wireless access technologies.
With respect to intellectual merit, the proposed architecture seeks to integrate both PON and 4G wireless access technologies in terms of unified control and management of both wired and wireless access networks. This adds a number of challenging dimensions to the integration problem. In contrast to mainstream centralized PON and radio access network (RAN) architectures, the proposed converged access networking scheme must support not only a fully distributed integrated PON-RAN architecture, but also a unified control plane that manages and controls both fixed optical and mobile radio network resources. This calls for new integrated wireline and wireless radio control algorithms and procedures that operate in a distributed manner.
With respect to broader impact, the proposed integrated networking approach has the potential to provide a significantly more cost effective solution than existing technologies and features that could lead to graceful transition, rapid acceptance, and near-term deployment. Widely available, high data rate access to networks has important societal benefits in bridging the "digital divide." The project's integrated education and research program has the goal of enhancing recruitment and outreach to various underrepresented communities at the City College of New York and in the New York metropolitan area.
The overall objective of this project was to develop and demonstrate all of the critical elements necessary for the implementation of high-capacity, high-performance, cost-effective, Passive Optical Network (PON)-based converged fixed-mobile access networking solution that efficiently transports and supports a wide range of existing and emerging fixed-mobile advanced multimedia applications and services along with the diverse quality of service (QoS), rate, and reliability requirements set by these services. Specifically, we have devised and demonstrated a revolutionary TDM/CWDM-based PON architecture with native Ethernet, albeit with carrier-class enhancements, as the converged access networking infrastructure along with several innovative networking features that collectively enable the support of a unified access networking infrastructure for next-generation fixed PON-based and 4G mobile broadband access technologies. The key significant outcomes of this work are: i) The proposed ring-based PON backhaul architecture supports several key salient networking features that collectively significantly enhance the performance of both the 4G LTE’s Radio Access Network (RAN) and core network (Evolved Packet Core (EPC) per 3GPP standard) compared to that of the typical PTP backhaul architecture in terms of handoff capability, signaling overhead, overall network throughput and latency, and QoS support. ii) In addition to the widely talked about macro-cell offloading gains that mainly correspond to the saving in macro-cell resources, the proposed PON-based backhaul architecture also supports EPC offloading gains, which ensures that core network equipment is used more productively (e.g., freeing up a sizable fraction of the badly needed network resources as well as processing on the typically overloaded access gateway (AGW) serving nodes in the EPC). The EPC offloading gains also include offloading actual local mobile data and signaling traffic including VOIP, video, and data from the mobile backhaul to the RAN. This is in contrast to the typical Internet offloading where it is only best effort traffic that is offloaded from the mobile backhaul to the Internet.
