On the Merits of Deploying TDM-based Next-Generation PON Solutions in the Access Arena As Multiservice, All Packet-Based 4G Mobile Backhaul RAN Architecture

The phenomenal growth of mobile backhaul capacity required to support the emerging fourth-generation (4G) traffic including mobile WiMAX, cellular Long-Term Evolution (LTE), and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) requires rapid migration from today\u27s legacy circuit switched T1/E1 wireline and microwave backhaul technologies to a new fiber-supported, all-packet-based mobile backhaul infrastructure. Clearly, a cost effective fiber supported all-packet-based mobile backhaul radio access network (RAN) architecture that is compatible with these inherently distributed 4G RAN architectures is needed to efficiently scale current mobile backhaul networks. However, deploying a green fiber-based mobile backhaul infrastructure is a costly proposition mainly due to the significant cost associated with digging the trenches in which the fiber is to be laid. These, along with the inevitable trend towards all-IP/Ethernet transport protocols and packet switched networks, have prompted many carriers around the world to consider the potential of utilizing the existing fiber-based Passive Optical Network (PON) access infrastructure as an all-packet-based converged fixed-mobile optical access networking transport architecture to backhaul both mobile and typical wireline traffic. Passive Optical Network (PON)-based fiber-to-the-curb/home (FTTC/FTTH) access networks are being deployed around the globe based on two Time-Division Multiplexed (TDM) standards: ITU G.984 Gigabit PON (GPON) and IEEE 802.ah Ethernet PON (EPON). A PON connects a group of Optical Network Units (ONUs) located at the subscriber premises to an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) located at the service provider\u27s facility. It is the purpose of this thesis to examine the technological requirements and assess the performance analysis and feasibility for deploying TDM-based next-generation (NG) PON solutions in the access arena as multiservice, all packet-based 4G mobile backhaul RAN and/or converged fixed-mobile optical networking architecture. Specifically, this work proposes and devises a simple and cost-effective 10G-EPON-based 4G mobile backhaul RAN architecture 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. The techno-economics merits of utilizing PON-based 4G RAN architecture versus that of traditional 4G (mobile WiMAX and LTE) RAN will be thoroughly examine and quantified. To achieve our objective, we utilize the existing fiber-based PON access infrastructure with novel ring-based distribution access network and wireless-enabled OLT and ONUs as the multiservice packet-based 4G mobile backhaul RAN infrastructure. Specifically, to simplify the implementation of such a complex undertaking, this work is divided into two sequential phases. In the first phase, we examine and quantify the overall performance of the standalone ring-based 10G-EPON architecture (just the wireline part without overlaying/incorporating the wireless part (4G RAN)) via modeling and simulations. We then assemble the basic building blocks, components, and sub-systems required to build up a proof-of-concept prototype testbed for the standalone ring-based EPON architecture. The testbed will be used to verify and demonstrate the performance of the standalone architecture, specifically, in terms of power budget, scalability, and reach. In the second phase, we develop an integrated framework for the efficient interworking between the two wireline PON and 4G mobile access technologies, particularly, in terms of unified network control and management (NCM) operations. Specifically, we address the key technical challenges associated with tailoring a typically centralized PON-based access architecture to interwork with and support a distributed 4G RAN architecture and associated radio NCM operations. This is achieved via introducing and developing several salient-networking innovations that collectively enable the standalone EPON architecture to support a fully distributed 4G mobile backhaul RAN and/or a truly unified NG-PON-4G access networking architecture. These include a fully distributed control plane that enables intercommunication among the access nodes (ONUs/BSs) as well as signaling, scheduling algorithms, and handoff procedures that operate in a distributed manner. Overall, the proposed NG-PON architecture constitutes a complete networking paradigm shift from the typically centralized PON\u27s architecture and OLT-based NCM operations to a new disruptive fully distributed PON\u27s architecture and NCM operations in which all the typically centralized OLT-based PON\u27s NCM operations are migrated to and independently implemented by the access nodes (ONUs) in a distributed manner. This requires migrating most of the typically centralized wireline and radio control and user-plane functionalities such as dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA), queue management and packet scheduling, handover control, radio resource management, admission control, etc., typically implemented in today\u27s OLT/RNC, to the access nodes (ONUs/4G BSs). It is shown that the overall performance of the proposed EPON-based 4G backhaul including both the RAN and Mobile Packet Core (MPC) {Evolved Packet Core (EPC) per 3GPP LTE\u27s standard} is significantly augmented compared to that of the typical 4G RAN, specifically, in terms of handoff capability, signaling overhead, overall network throughput and latency, and QoS support. Furthermore, the proposed architecture enables redistributing some of the intelligence and NCM operations currently centralized in the MPC platform out into the access nodes of the mobile RAN. Specifically, as this work will show, it enables offloading sizable fraction of the mobile signaling as well as actual local upstream traffic transport and processing (LTE bearers switch/set-up, retain, and tear-down and associated signaling commands from the BSs to the EPC and vice-versa) from the EPC to the access nodes (ONUs/BSs). This has a significant impact on the performance of the EPC. First, it frees up a sizable fraction of the badly needed network resources as well as processing on the overloaded centralized serving nodes (AGW) in the MPC. Second, it frees up capacity and sessions on the typically congested mobile backhaul from the BSs to the EPC and vice-versa

A green open access optical distribution network with incremental deployment support

This paper proposes an optical distribution network (ODN) architecture for open access networks. The proposed scheme ensures co-existence of multiple business partners (BPs) e.g., service, network equipment, and infrastructure providers at different levels of the distribution network, along with physicallayer security. Further, physical-layer isolation is provided to each subscriber, preventing network disruption by malicious subscribers. The proposed open access ODN supports BPs with different granularities (sizes) and discourages monopoly; thus, allowing multiple BPs to co-exist. It also supports incremental deployability (ID) which allows the BPs to cope with an expanding user base. Thus, small BPs can take up a market share with reasonable initial investment and grow with differential expenditures. ID further allows us to incrementally scale up the power consumption as a function of the network load, making the architecture green. The proposed ODN is based on a passive optical network (PON) architecture resulting in low operational expenditures (OpEx) and high availability. Besides a new ODN architecture, a novel architecture for the optical line terminal (OLT), based on hybrid time and wavelength-division multiplexing (TWDM), is proposed. The BPs can adopt typical TWDM, wavelength division multiplexing, or the TWDM-based OLT architecture (introduced in this paper) over the proposed ODN

An Innovative RAN Architecture for Emerging Heterogeneous Networks: The Road to the 5G Era

The global demand for mobile-broadband data services has experienced phenomenal growth over the last few years, driven by the rapid proliferation of smart devices such as smartphones and tablets. This growth is expected to continue unabated as mobile data traffic is predicted to grow anywhere from 20 to 50 times over the next 5 years. Exacerbating the problem is that such unprecedented surge in smartphones usage, which is characterized by frequent short on/off connections and mobility, generates heavy signaling traffic load in the network signaling storms . This consumes a disproportion amount of network resources, compromising network throughput and efficiency, and in extreme cases can cause the Third-Generation (3G) or 4G (long-term evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A)) cellular networks to crash. As the conventional approaches of improving the spectral efficiency and/or allocation additional spectrum are fast approaching their theoretical limits, there is a growing consensus that current 3G and 4G (LTE/LTE-A) cellular radio access technologies (RATs) won\u27t be able to meet the anticipated growth in mobile traffic demand. To address these challenges, the wireless industry and standardization bodies have initiated a roadmap for transition from 4G to 5G cellular technology with a key objective to increase capacity by 1000Ã? by 2020 . Even though the technology hasn\u27t been invented yet, the hype around 5G networks has begun to bubble. The emerging consensus is that 5G is not a single technology, but rather a synergistic collection of interworking technical innovations and solutions that collectively address the challenge of traffic growth. The core emerging ingredients that are widely considered the key enabling technologies to realize the envisioned 5G era, listed in the order of importance, are: 1) Heterogeneous networks (HetNets); 2) flexible backhauling; 3) efficient traffic offload techniques; and 4) Self Organizing Networks (SONs). The anticipated solutions delivered by efficient interworking/ integration of these enabling technologies are not simply about throwing more resources and /or spectrum at the challenge. The envisioned solution, however, requires radically different cellular RAN and mobile core architectures that efficiently and cost-effectively deploy and manage radio resources as well as offload mobile traffic from the overloaded core network. The main objective of this thesis is to address the key techno-economics challenges facing the transition from current Fourth-Generation (4G) cellular technology to the 5G era in the context of proposing a novel high-risk revolutionary direction to the design and implementation of the envisioned 5G cellular networks. The ultimate goal is to explore the potential and viability of cost-effectively implementing the 1000x capacity challenge while continuing to provide adequate mobile broadband experience to users. Specifically, this work proposes and devises a novel PON-based HetNet mobile backhaul RAN architecture that: 1) holistically addresses the key techno-economics hurdles facing the implementation of the envisioned 5G cellular technology, specifically, the backhauling and signaling challenges; and 2) enables, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, the support of efficient ground-breaking mobile data and signaling offload techniques, which significantly enhance the performance of both the HetNet-based RAN and LTE-A\u27s core network (Evolved Packet Core (EPC) per 3GPP standard), ensure that core network equipment is used more productively, and moderate the evolving 5G\u27s signaling growth and optimize its impact. To address the backhauling challenge, we propose a cost-effective fiber-based small cell backhaul infrastructure, which leverages existing fibered and powered facilities associated with a PON-based fiber-to-the-Node/Home (FTTN/FTTH)) residential access network. Due to the sharing of existing valuable fiber assets, the proposed PON-based backhaul architecture, in which the small cells are collocated with existing FTTN remote terminals (optical network units (ONUs)), is much more economical than conventional point-to-point (PTP) fiber backhaul designs. A fully distributed ring-based EPON architecture is utilized here as the fiber-based HetNet backhaul. The techno-economics merits of utilizing the proposed PON-based FTTx access HetNet RAN architecture versus that of traditional 4G LTE-A\u27s RAN will be thoroughly examined and quantified. Specifically, we quantify the techno-economics merits of the proposed PON-based HetNet backhaul by comparing its performance versus that of a conventional fiber-based PTP backhaul architecture as a benchmark. It is shown that the purposely selected ring-based PON architecture along with the supporting distributed control plane enable the proposed PON-based FTTx RAN architecture to support several key salient networking features that collectively significantly enhance the overall performance of both the HetNet-based RAN and 4G LTE-A\u27s core (EPC) compared to that of the typical fiber-based PTP backhaul architecture in terms of handoff capability, signaling overhead, overall network throughput and latency, and QoS support. It will also been shown that the proposed HetNet-based RAN architecture is not only capable of providing the typical macro-cell offloading gain (RAN gain) but also can provide ground-breaking EPC offloading gain. The simulation results indicate that the overall capacity of the proposed HetNet scales with the number of deployed small cells, thanks to LTE-A\u27s advanced interference management techniques. For example, if there are 10 deployed outdoor small cells for every macrocell in the network, then the overall capacity will be approximately 10-11x capacity gain over a macro-only network. To reach the 1000x capacity goal, numerous small cells including 3G, 4G, and WiFi (femtos, picos, metros, relays, remote radio heads, distributed antenna systems) need to be deployed indoors and outdoors, at all possible venues (residences and enterprises)

On greening optical access networks

With the remarkable growth of fiber-based services, the number of FTTx subscribers has been dramatically increasing in recent years. Owing to the environmental concern, reducing energy consumption of optical access networks has become an important issue for network designers. In Ethernet passive optical network (EPON), the optical line terminal (OLT) located at the central office broadcasts the downstream traffic to all optical network units (ONUs), each of which checks all arrival downstream packets to obtain those destined to itself. Since traffic of ONUs changes dynamically, properly defining the sleep mode for idle ONUs can potentially save a significant amount of energy. However, it is challenging to shut down an ONU receiver as the ONU needs to receive some downstream control packets to perform upstream transmission. In this framework, a novel sleep control scheme is proposed to address the downstream issue which can efficiently put ONU receivers to sleep. This dissertation further defines multiple levels of power saving in which the ONU disables certain functions based on the upstream and downstream traffic load. The proposed schemes are completely compatible with the multi-point control protocol (MPCP) and EPON standards. Elimination of the handshake process makes the sleep control schemes more efficient. Currently, OLTs also consume a significant amount of energy in EPON. Therefore, reducing energy consumption of OLT is as important as reducing energy consumption of ONUs; such requirement becomes even more urgent as OLT keeps increasing its provisioning data rate, and higher data rate provisioning usually implies higher energy consumption. Thus, a novel energy-efficient OLT structure, which guarantees services of end users with a smallest number of power-on OLT line cards, is proposed. More specifically, the number of power-on OLT line cards is adapted to the real-time incoming traffic. Also, to avoid service disruption resulted by powering off OLT line cards, a proper optical switch is equipped in OLT to dynamically configure the communications between OLT line cards and ONUs. By deploying a semi-Markov based technique, the performance characteristics of the sleep control scheme such as delay and energy-saving are theoretically analyzed. It is shown that, with proper settings of sleep control parameters, the proposed scheme can save a significant amount of energy in EPON

Design and cost performance of WDM pons for multi-wavelength users

Die rasante Verbreitung des Internet führt zu einem steigenden Bedarf an höheren Bitraten in Telekommunikationsnetzwerken. Dieser kann derzeit nur mit optischen Netzwerken erfüllt werden, insbesondere mit der Wellen¬längen¬multiplex-Technik (WDM). Viele Forschungsergebnisse weisen darauf hin, dass WDM Passive Optische Netzwerke (PON) die nächste Generation der optischen Zugangsnetze darstellen. Die Wellenlängenmultiplex-Technik beruht darauf, dass mehrere optische Kanäle mit niedrigen Bitraten über eine Faser übertragen werden und so ein WDM Signal mit hoher Bitrate erzeugen. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die Identifizierung von neuen Architekturen, welche jedem Benutzer und jedem Dienst mindestens eine Wellenlänge zur Verfügung stellen. Neue Methoden und Modelle zur Berechnung von ein- und mehrstufigen WDM PONs werden eingeführt. Um alle technologisch realisierbaren ein- und mehrstufigen WDM PONs zu berechnen und zu analysieren wurde ein Design Tool entwickelt. Für einen flächendeckenden kommerziellen Einsatz reicht es nicht aus, funktionierende Technologien anzubieten, vielmehr müssen ökonomische Über¬legungen miteinbezogen werden. Diese Arbeit ermöglicht einen Vergleich unterschiedlicher Architekturen hinsichtlich ihrer Wirtschaftlichkeit und zielt darauf ab, jene Architekturen zu identifizieren, welche kostenoptimal sind. Neue kosten¬optimale Netzwerk-Architekturen führen zu einer schnelleren Marktpenetration und dazu, Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Realität werden zu lassen.Due to the incomparable popularity of the Internet, the already enormous and still rocketing bandwidth demand may only be satisfied by optical networks, particularly by using the Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology. In many research labs, WDM Passive Optical Networks (PON) access networks are considered as the next generation optical access. To obtain WDM signals with high bit rates, multiple channels operating at a lower transmission speed can be supported on a single optical fiber. The subject of this thesis will be engineering new cutting edge architectures offering each user and service at least one wavelength. New techniques and models are introduced to design single and multistage WDM PONs. A design tool was implemented to analyze all technologically feasible single and multistage WDM PON architectures. During real deployments, the technology has worked but the economic factors have proven to be too costly. Thus, it is important to examine these economic aspects. The objective is to identify those architectures that minimize costs. Access to these newly identified network architectures will prompt market introduction as well as market penetration helping Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) to become reality

Green radio communication networks applying radio-over-fibre technology for wireless access

Wireless communication increasingly is becoming the first choice link to enter into the global information society. It is an essential part of broadband communication networks, due to its capacity to cover the end-user domain, outdoors or indoors. The use of mobile phones and broadband has already exceeded the one of the fixed telephones and has caused tremendous changes in peoples life, as not only to be recognised in the current political overthrows. The all-around presence of wireless communication links combined with functions that support mobility will make a roaming person-bound communication network possible in the near future. This idea of a personal network, in which a user has his own communication environment available everywhere, necessitates immense numbers of radio access points to maintain the wireless links and support mobility. The progress towards “all-around wireless” needs budget and easily maintainable radio access points, with simplified signal processing and consolidation of the radio network functions in a central station. The RF energy consumption in mobile base stations is one of the main problems in the wireless communication system, which has led to the worldwide research in so called green communication, which offers an environmentally friendly and cost-effective solution. In order to extend networks and mobility support, the simplification of antenna stations and broadband communication capacity becomes an increasingly urgent demand, also the extension of the wireless signal transmission distance to consolidate the signal processing in a centralised site. Radio-over-Fibre technology (RoF) was considered and found to be the most promising solution to achieve effective delivery of wireless and baseband signals, also to reduce RF energy consumption. The overall aim of this research project was to simulate the transmission of wireless and baseband RF signals via fibre for a long distance in high quality, consuming a low-power budget. Therefore, this thesis demonstrated a green radio communication network and the advantage of transmitting signals via fibre rather than via air. The contributions of this research work were described in the follows: Firstly, a comparison of the power consumption in WiMAX via air and fibre is presented. As shown in the simulation results, the power budget for the transmission of 64 QAM WiMAX IEEE 802.16-2005 via air for a distance of 5km lies at -189.67 dB, whereas for the transmission via RoF for a distance of 140km, the power consumption ranges at 65dB. Through the deployment of a triple symmetrical compensator technique, consisting of SMF, DCF and FBG, the transmission distance of the 54 Mbps WiMAX signal can be increased to 410km without increasing the power budget of 65dB. An amendment of the triple compensator technique to SMF, DCF and CFBG allows a 120Mbps WiMAX signal transmission with a clear RF spectrum of 3.5 GHz and constellation diagram over a fibre length of 792km using a power budget of 192dB. Secondly, the thesis demonstrates a simulation setup for the deployment of more than one wireless system, namely 64 QAM WiMAX IEEE 802.16-2005 and LTE, for a data bit rate of 1Gbps via Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) RoF over a transmission distance of 1800km. The RoF system includes two triple symmetrical compensator techniques - DCF, SMF, and CFBG - to obtain a large bandwidth, power budget of 393.6dB and a high signal quality for the long transmission distance. Finally, the thesis proposed a high data bit rate and energy efficient simulation architecture, applying a passive optical component for a transmission span up to 600km. A Gigabit Optical Passive Network (GPON) based on RoF downlink 2.5 Gbps and uplink 1.25Gbps is employed to carry LTE and WiMAX, also 18 digital channels by utilising Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM). The setup achieved high data speed, a low-power budget of 151.2dB, and an increased service length of up to 600km

Network virtualization in next-generation cellular networks: a spectrum pooling approach

The hardship of expanding the cellular network market results from the tremendous high cost of mobile infrastructure, i.e. the capital expenditures (CAPEX) and the operational expenditures (OPEX). Spectrum Sharing is one of the proposed solution for the high-cost of scalability of cellular networks. However, most of the proposed spectrum pooling frameworks in the literature are mostly approached from a technical view besides there are no good cost models based on real datasets for quantifying the circumstances under which sharing the spectrum and network resources would be beneficial to mobile operators. In this thesis, by studying different sharing scenarios in a fiber-based backhaul mobile network, we assess the incentives for service providers (SPs) to share spectrum/infrastructure in different cellular market areas/economic areas (CMA/BEAs) with different population density, allocated bandwidth (BW), spectrum bid values and considering different network topologies. Moreover, we look at the technical problem of sharing the spectrum between two SPs sharing the same basestation (BS), yet they have different traffic demand as well as different QoS constraints. We design a resource allocation scheme to provision real-time (RT), non-real-time (NRT) as well as Ultra-reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) traffic in a single shared BS scenario such that SPs achieve isolation, fairness and enforce their QoS constraints. Finally, we exploit spectrum pooling to develop an approach for dynamically re-configuring the base stations that survive a disaster and are powered by a microgrid to form a multi-hop mesh network in order to provide local cellular service