Standardization and Technology Trends in Optical, Wireless and Virtualized Access Systems

Abstract

This paper reviews access system standardization activities and related technologies from the viewpoints of optical-based PON access, mobile access systems including LPWAN, and access network virtualization. Future study issues for the next access systems are also presented.

Energy Conservation in Passive Optical Networks: A Tutorial and Survey

“…They provide a detailed overview on SDN managed optical equipment. However, their discussions lack detail analysis about the architectures for SDN controlled PONs proposed by standardization bodies like Broadband Forum (BBF) [40] and ONF [8], [9]. Additionally, it reviews only a few solutions applying sleep mode approach for saving energy in SDN controlled PONs.…”

“…12. Additionally, on its southbound side (as the intermediary), to communicate with the PON equipment, VOLTHA uses vendor-specific protocols and protocol extensions through adapters [8]. Since an SDNbased architecture is expected to reduce cost compared to use of traditional dedicated OLTs, major telecom operators are strongly promoting the SEBA project [153].…”

“…Motivated by the benefits of modularization and softwarization such as faster policy update and improved energy efficiency and reliability, besides the non-time-critical functions, FASA aims to modularize the time-critical functions (e.g., DBA, ONU sleep control and PON protection) [190]. In the coming years, PON/OLT disaggregation and virtualization with quick response capability will necessitate further the integration of edge computing facilities in PON (e.g., OLT embedded edge computing) [8], [109]. Such convergence of OLT with edge computing will leverage the opportunities cater various applications like content delivery network and wireless network associated NFVs [109].…”

“…From previous sections (see Sections II-B and III-D), we observe that edge computing is becoming an integral part of PON with the growing needs of disaggregation and virtualization of functions and AI assisted service demand at the customer premises. Although earlier edge computing was considered as an OLT/ONU co-located independent computing and storage entities (e.g., [112]- [114]), presently it is being regarded as a part of OLT and ONU (e.g., in [8], [109], [110], [117]). This built in computing platform in PON may need to coordinate with each other as well as with the Cloud to facilitate cooperative computing to support customer applications efficiently and can leverage PON energy saving capability, e.g., by reducing volume of uplink data through local processing [110].…”

“…Besides, we have been witnessing continuous industry efforts towards the development of SDN controlled PON. For example, Open Networking Foundation (ONF) initiated the Virtual OLT Hardware Abstraction (VOLTHA) project [8], [9], where a vendoragnostic management system was introduced to facilitate SDN based PON control.…”