A Simple and Cost-Effective EPON-Based Next Generation Mobile Backhaul RAN Architecture
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research Bronx Community College 2017 A Simple and Cost-Effective EPON-Based Next Generation Mobile Backhaul RAN Architecture Ajaz Sana CUNY Bronx Community College Syed R. Zaidi CUNY Bronx Community College Shahab Hussain Nokia, Westford Mohammad Nizamuddin CUNY City College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/bx_pubs/65 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Wireless Engineering and Technology, 2017, 8, 1-19 http://www.scirp.org/journal/wet ISSN Online: 2152-2308 ISSN Print: 2152-2294 A Simple and Cost-Effective EPON-Based Next Generation Mobile Backhaul RAN Architecture Ajaz Sana1, Syed R. Zaidi1, Shahab Hussain2, Mohammad Nizamuddin3 1Department of Engineering, Physics & Technology, Bronx Community College of the City University of New York, New York, USA 2Nokia, Westford, USA 3Department of Electrical Engineering, City College of the City University of New York, New York, USA How to cite this paper: Sana, A., Zaidi, Abstract S.R., Hussain, S. and Nizamuddin, M. (2017) A Simple and Cost-Effective EPON-Based This study proposes a novel, simple and cost-effective PON-based next gener- Next Generation Mobile Backhaul RAN ation mobile backhaul RAN architecture that enables redistribution of some Architecture. Wireless Engineering and Te- of the intelligence currently centralized in the Mobile Packet Core (MPC) chnology, 8, 1-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/wet.2017.81001 platform out into the access nodes of the RAN. Specifically, this work proposes a fully distributed ring-based EPON architecture that enables the support of a Received: September 2, 2016 converged PON-4G/5G mobile WiMAX/LTE access networking transport in- Accepted: January 20, 2017 frastructure to seamlessly backhaul both mobile and wireline multimedia traf- Published: January 23, 2017 fic and services. Copyright © 2017 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. Keywords This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International LTE, WiMAX, 4G, EPON, TDM PON License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access 1. Introduction The phenomenal growth of mobile backhaul to support the emerging fourth- generation (4G) traffic that includes mobile WiMAX and cellular Long-Term Evolution (LTE), requires rapid migration from today’s legacy circuit switched T1/E1 wireline and microwave backhaul technologies to a new fiber-supported, all-packet-based mobile backhaul infrastructure [1] [2] [3] [4]. Mobile backhaul sometimes referred to, as the Radio Access Network (RAN), is used to backhaul traffic from individual base stations (BSs) to the Radio Network Controller (RNC) which is then connected to the mobile operator’s core network or gate- way. In contrast with the typically centralized 2G/3G RAN infrastructure, the 4G architecture specifically LTE has fundamentally different RAN design require- ments. Hence, a cost-effective fiber supported all-packet-based mobile backhaul RAN architecture that is compatible with these inherently distributed and packet- DOI: 10.4236/wet.2017.81001 January 23, 2017 A. Sana et al. oriented NG RAN architectures, is needed to efficiently scale current mobile backhaul networks. However, deploying a new fiber-based mobile backhaul in- frastructure is a costly proposition mainly due to the significant cost associated with digging the trenches in which the fiber is to be laid. This underlying potential prompted many carriers around the world to con- sider the use of the fiber-based Passive Optical Network (PON) access infra- structure as an all-packet-based converged fixed-mobile optical access network- ing transport architecture to backhaul both mobile and typical wireline traffic. A PON connects a group of Optical Network Units (ONUs) located at the sub- scriber premises to an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) located at the service pro- vider’s facility. While the economies for commercially deploying TDM-PON in the access arena as a near-term converged fixed-mobile optical networking transport infrastructure are quiet convincing, however, several technical issues must be addressed first before mainstream TDM-based PONs could be used as viable optical access networking technology that enables the support of a truly unified PON-4G access networking architecture or just a 4G mobile backhaul RAN architecture. The most notable issue is, TDM-PON is a centralized access architecture-relying on a component at the distant OLT to arbitrate upstream traffic, while 4G is a distributed architecture where, in particular, the 4G LTE standard requires a new distributed RAN architecture and further create a re- quirement to fully meshing the BSs (the X2 interface for LTE BS-BS handoffs requires a more meshed architecture) [1] [2] [3]. Thus, a converged PON-4G access infrastructure (or just a PON-based 4G mobile backhaul RAN) must be capable of supporting a distributed architecture as well as distributed network control and management (NCM) operations. The major weakness is that, main- stream PONs are typically deployed as tree topologies and the tree-based topol- ogy can neither support the distributed access architecture nor intercommunica- tion among the access nodes (ONUs) attached to the PON. The key challenge in devising a truly unified PON-4G access architecture is how to reconcile the tra- ditionally centralized PON’s architecture and NCM operations with the typically distributed 4G’s architecture and NCM operations. Though numerous hybrid Fiber-Wireless network architectures have been expected to utilize the fiber-based PON access infrastructure to backhaul mobile traffic [5] [6] [7] [8], most of these architectures, however, have utilized the typ- ically centralized tree-based PON topology, which can only support a centralized RAN architecture. Since both wireless and wireline segments of these hybrid ar- chitectures are assumed to be centralized, the key design requirements and chal- lenges associated with overlaying a fully distributed mobile RAN segment (e.g., 4G LTE) over a typically centralized PON-based wireline segment, still remain unresolved. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel, simple, and cost ef- fective PON-based 4G mobile backhaul RAN architecture that enables redistri- bution of some of the intelligence (e.g., bandwidth/QoS provisioning) currently centralized in the Mobile Packet Core (MPC) platform out into the access nodes of the RAN. Specifically, this project devises a fully distributed ring-based EPON 2 A. Sana et al. architecture that enables the support of a converged PON-4G mobile WiMAX/ LTE access networking transport infrastructure to seamlessly backhaul both mobile and wireline multimedia traffic and services. We quantify the merits of utilizing a distributed EPON-based mobile WiMAX RAN architecture and those of traditional mobile WiMAX backhaul infrastructure. The salient feature of the proposed architecture is that it supports 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 dis- tributed manner. We outline some of the key technical requirements associated with devising a truly unified fixed-mobile 4G LTE/flat mobile WiMAX access transport architecture that is built on top of a typically centralized PON infra- structure. The proposed architecture supports several key networking features that sig- nificantly improve the performance of both the RAN and MPC in terms of han- doff capability, overall network throughput and latency, and QoS support. Though we have chosen Ethernet-based PON and mobile WiMAX as represent- ative techniques for fixed PON and 4G mobile access technologies, the proposed architecture and related operation principles are also applicable to other PON and 4G access networks such as GPON and LTE. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 gives an overview of the standalone ring-based EPON architecture and Section 3 discusses how to evolve the ring-based architecture to an all-packet-based converged fixed-mobile optical access networking transport infrastructure. Section 4 presents some of the key salient features enabled by the proposed architecture. Section 5 reports simulation results and Section 6 offers some concluding remarks. 2. Overview of the Standalone Ring-Based EPON Architecture Figure 1 illustrates the proposed standalone ring-based PON architecture [9]. An OLT is connected to N ONUs via a 20 km trunk feeder fiber, a passive 3-port 802.3 ah interface DBA & Scheduling control messages BS admission control module 2x1 CWDM ONU-1 Combiner BS with 802.3ah interface 2 ASN_ DS 10-20 km GW / 1 OLT Ring ~1 km US 3 ONU-N Upstream Downstream 20:80 Splitter Up+ Down stream Figure 1. EPON-based RAN architecture. 3 A. Sana et al. optical circulator, and a short distribution fiber ring. The ONUs are joined with point-to-point links in a closed loop around the access ring. The links are unidi- rectional. Both downstream (DS) and upstream (US) signals (combined signal) are transmitted in one direction only. The US signal is transmitted sequentially bit by bit around the ring from one node to the next where it is terminated, processed, regenerated, and retransmitted at each node (ONU). Since US trans- mission is based