Dynamic ONU grouping in flexible passive optical networks

The big pressure of huge traffic requires people to consider how to improve the network efficiency. One of possible solutions is to reduce the traffic entering the metro/core networks. A flexible PON architecture based on software defined network technology is proposed to increase the exchange capability of local access network, which is comprised of an OLT pool, an ONU pool, a flexible ODN, and a controller. Based on this architecture, an ONU grouping algorithm is proposed to find the optimal OLT-ONU connection scheme, so that the inter-OLT traffic, i.e. the outbound traffic of access network, can be minimized. Experimental simulations indicate that, the proposed architecture and algorithm can reduce the total traffic entering into the metro/core network and keep a low time complexity. Further analysis shows that the access network with high traffic nonuniform will benefit more from the proposed ONU grouping algorithm.