Architecture discovery enabled resource allocation mechanism for next generation optical-wireless converged networks

Optical-wireless convergence is identified as a promising solution to facilitate quality-of-service (QoS)-guaranteed, ubiquitous, and high-bandwidth access to end users. Different converged network architectures can be deployed depending on individual circumstances to achieve improved performance without compromising cost-effectiveness. However, with different network architectures, different resource allocation mechanisms are required to achieve the best performance. This is problematic in both the deployment and operational phases. In this paper, we propose an architecture discovery enabled resource allocation (ADERA) mechanism for the long term evolution (LTE)-gigabit Ethernet passive optical network (GEPON) converged network. The proposed ADERA is a self-adaptive algorithm ¿ it discovers the underlying architecture of the network by analyzing control signals and eventually evolves into an effective resource handling mechanism for the respective architecture. In addition, ADERA leverages inherited features of both the LTE network and GEPON in conjunction with the characteristics of their frame structures to improve the overall network performance. For example, ADERA is incorporated with a near-future traffic forecasting mechanism for efficient resource allocation. Using simulations, we evaluate the performance of our proposed ADERA algorithm and compare it against other existing resource allocation mechanisms. Our results indicate that ADERA achieves improved QoS performance in the converged network irrespective of the architecture used for the deployment. © 2013 OSA.