Efficient inter-thread scheduling scheme for long-reach passive optical networks

These days there is a clear trend toward extending the reach of passive optical networks to cover large geographical areas, which enables reduction of the number of central offices and hence has the potential of cost saving in network operation. On the other hand, this reach extension necessitates the design of efficient dynamic bandwidth allocation schemes in order to tackle performance degradation caused by the increased propagation delay in long reach PONs. Among many existing approaches, the multi-thread-based DBA scheme where several bandwidth allocation processes are performed in parallel is considered one of the most effective options to improve network performance in LRPONs. We have found that without proper intercommunication between the overlapped threads, multi-thread DBA may lose efficiency and even perform worse than the conventional single-thread algorithm. With this in mind, this article reviews different inter-thread scheduling schemes for LR-PONs, and proposes a novel approach of integrating the key ideas of the existing ones. Extensive simulation results confirm that our proposed scheme can significantly improve DBA performance for LR-PONs under a variety of scenarios with consideration of different values of network load and reach.