Optimizing maintenance efficiency in OFDMA-PONs supporting wireline-wireless convergence

Nowadays, the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technology applied on a Passive Optical Network (PON) has been proposed. The unified virtual subcarrier scheduling has been achieved using virtualization, to hide the differences of heterogeneous multiplexing ways and well optimize the performances of the OFDMA-PON supporting ubiquitous service. In a multi-segment OFDMA-PON, each segment connects with a distribution fibre. If all distribution fibres are under maintenance simultaneously, it will disrupt the service continuity, thus it necessitates the proposition of an appropriate virtual subcarrier scheduling scheme. In this paper, by using virtual subcarrier migrations during each maintenance batch, only a partial set of distribution fibres are maintained, leaving the remaining ones still on to fully support operations. Correspondingly, we formulate this problem aiming to minimize the number of maintenance batches with guaranteeing an acceptable service delay. By simulations, a good trade-off solution is achieved for maintenance efficiency and service delay in the OFDMA-PON supporting wireline-wireless convergence.