Distributed antenna-based EPON-WiMAX integration and its cost-efficient cell planning

Achieving the benefits of high-capacity of optical networks and the mobility feature of wireless networks leads to integrate EPON and WiMAX for a promising broadband access solution. To efficiently put both benefits together, we propose an integration architecture of EPON-WiMAX based upon a Distributed Antenna (DA) environment, where collaborative Base Stations (BSs) concurrently transmit same wireless downlink signals (specifically for multicast and broadcast services (MBSs)) to Mobile Stations (MSs) in overlapped cell coverage areas. It helps enlarge the region of the available network coverage area by increasing Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) in overlapped cell coverage areas through cooperation between Optical Line Terminal (OLT) and Optical Network Unit (ONU)- BS. We also present an cost-efficient cell planning to optimally control the size of overlapped cell coverage areas for the proposed DA-based integration architecture with a case study under a required region of the available network coverage area in consideration of the number of ONU-BSs and the distance between ONU-BSs. Performance evaluation results show that the proposed DA-based integration architecture enhances cost efficiency compared to the Traditional Antenna (TA) (non-DA)-based integration architecture with a similar level of spectral efficiency of MSs.