Evaluation of dynamic bandwidth allocation with clustered routing in FiWi networks

The demand for bandwidth in broadband access networks has been increasing exponentially in recent years, due to high-bandwidth applications, such as video on demand (VoD), and peer-to peer (P2P) networking through increasingly powerful mobile devices. The demand for bandwidth and mobility has motivated the development of fiber-wireless (FiWi) networks, which combine the optical access network with the wireless network. FiWi networks support high bandwidth with optical networking mechanisms and mobility through wireless networking. In our previous work, we introduced clustered and localized routing (CluLoR) in FiWi networks. We examined CluLoR, which improves throughput-delay performance compared to a flat (unclustered) topology, only for an elementary dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) algorithm in the optical part of the FiWi network. In this paper, we extend our previous work by conducting an extensive evaluation of DBA algorithms on the CluLoR performance in FiWi networks. In this paper, our focus is how the wireless upstream traffic based on CluLoR going into the optical access network performs when conventional wired traffic is included in the optical network. We evaluate the delay performance for different practical scenarios and examine the underloading and overloading of the wireless and wired traffic respectively on FiWi networks. Our evaluations indicate that the performance impact of DBA algorithms depends on the source of the traffic and we provide comparisons in this paper.