Building a Green Wireless-Optical Broadband Access Network (WOBAN)

Access networks consume a significant portion of overall Internet energy consumption. With the increase of bit-rate requirements in access networks, future-proof access technologies should be energy efficient. In this paper, we show how we can build a very high-throughput “green” hybrid wireless-optical broadband access network (WOBAN). We devise novel energy-saving techniques for WOBAN to improve its energy efficiency and network utilization. We present a mixed integer linear program (MILP) model, which acts as a benchmark for evaluating our techniques. We analyze the impact of energy-aware design and protocols on the performance of WOBAN over dynamic traffic profiles. Illustrative numerical examples show that, with suitable design parameters, we can efficiently reduce energy consumption in WOBAN without significantly impacting the network performance.