A metaheuristic bandwidth allocation scheme for FiWi networks using Ant Colony Optimization

Optical-wireless access networks constitute a quite attractive solution to meet the ever-increasing bandwidth requirements of end-users, offering significant benefits such as ubiquitous coverage in the wireless domain and huge bandwidth in the optical domain. However, converging optical and wireless networking technologies, with Passive Optical Networks (PONs) and 4G wireless standards, such as the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) and the Long Term Evolution (LTE), entails major challenges that need to be addressed. In this context, designing an efficient and fair bandwidth distribution with Quality of Service (QoS) support is a difficult task due to the interdependence of resource allocation process to both optical and wireless domains. Specifically, the bandwidth distribution in the optical domain has to be aware of the mobile user heterogeneity in the wireless domain, while in the wireless domain the allocation process depends on the optical transmission grant opportunities. In this work a metaheuristic approach to govern the bandwidth allocation in modern Fiber Wireless (FiWi) networks is proposed. The Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) method is effectively employed in order to optimize the bandwidth report process of Mobile Subscribers (MSs). Simulation results reveal the effectiveness of the proposed approach in terms of latency and network throughput.