New Unified PON-RAN Access Architecture for 4G LTE Networks

This work presents a new converged access architecture for LTE mobile backhaul networks. In the proposed architecture, evolved NodeBs (eNBs) are interconnected with local ring-based wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) passive optical networks (PONs), which aggregate and efficiently transport traffic to the evolved packet core (EPC). The proposed WDM-PON ring design supports a dynamic setup of virtual circuits for inter-base-station communication, over a dedicated λLAN channel. It also supports load balancing, by dynamically reallocating and sharing the capacity of the downstream wavelengths. The reservation mechanism is arbitrated by the optical line terminal, which monitors the traffic imbalances of downstream channels and orchestrates the setup of subwavelength “transient flows.”