Mechanism design and performance analysis of coordinated registration protocol for NG-EPON

The IEEE 802.3ca task force is studying the next generation Ethernet passive optical network (NG-EPON), which introduces channel bonding to enable optical network units (ONUs) to bundle multiple wavelength channels to achieve higher peak rates. In order to register these multi-channel ONUs, the optical line terminal (OLT) needs to acquire ONUs' device information, assign working parameters, and verify the connectivity of each channel. Traditional ONU registration protocol, designed for singlechannel ONUs, is not suitable for multi-channel ONUs because it cannot guarantee the channel connectivities of all channels. Therefore, it is essential to extend the traditional registration protocol or design a new registration protocol for NG-EPON multi-channel ONUs. In this paper, we first extend the traditional registration protocol directly to satisfy the requirements of registering multi-channel ONUs. Besides, we propose a novel registration protocol based on the coordination of channel terminals. In order to compare the performances of two registration protocols, we model their registration processes, analyze their registration delays, and find their corresponding influence factors. Simulation results show that our proposed registration protocol has a smaller registration delay as well as better horizontal scalability.