Comparison of traffic control issues between regular PONs and superPONs

The need to share resources for cost reduction in residential access networks, the high demand for flexibility and robustness in the local loop, and the tendency towards fewer hierarchical levels in modern networks, create a synergy favoring the concept of ATM PONs and superPONs. To realize the potential of these attractive architectures, new traffic control methods regulating the shared resources are required. The impact of these controls on the access traffic between these two architectures are compared and evaluated. The delay performance strongly depends on the round trip time and the number of customers. The former dictates the speed of slot reservation while the latter affects the frequency of polling used to detect activity. Although superPON delay performance is naturally inferior to that of regular PONs, the higher concentration and resource sharing afforded by SPONs make it a strong competitor for residential local loops.