Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Supervisor

Abdallah Shami

Abstract

The emergence of bandwidth-intensive Internet services, such as
circuit-quality voice transfer and interactive video gaming, create
a high demand for a very qualified next-generation access network.
In addition to high bandwidth, these future access networks should
also provide improved network availability, flexibility, mobility,
reliability, failure protection, quality of service (QoS) support
and cost-effective access. The integration between optical networks
and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a
promising solution for future access networks. Accordingly, a few
different architectures and MAC protocol components have recently
been proposed for the integration between the Ethernet Passive
Optical Network (EPON) and WiMAX. However, the proposed
architectures contain several drawbacks. Moreover, the EPON-WiMAX
hybrid does not yet contain a comprehensive Medium Access Control
(MAC) protocol and a mechanism for Quality of Service (QoS) support.
Finally, this work introduces the Resilient Packet Ring (RPR)
standard, which aims to build high-performance metro edge and metro
core ring networks that interconnect multiple access networks. The
objective of this thesis is to examine the integration of optical
standards, such as RPR and EPON, with the WiMAX standard.
Subsequently, this integration will be applied to the areas of
architecture and MAC Protocol as a promising solution for not only
access networks but also for metro networks.


The first part of the thesis examines the EPON-WiMAX integration as
a solution for the access network. Specifically, the proposed
solution includes new EPON-WiMAX hybrid network architectures that
are suitable for both urban and rural environment requirements, and
it also introduces a joint MAC protocol for these architectures. The
proposed architectures are reliable and provide extended network
coverage; in particular, reliability is achieved by applying a
protection scheme to the most critical portion of the EPON part of
the architecture. Additionally, the network coverage of the
architecture is extended by inserting an intermediate network
between the front end and the backhaul network of the traditional
EPON-WiMAX architecture. Subsequently, we propose a comprehensive
joint MAC protocol for the proposed EPON-WiMAX architecture; this
protocol provides a per-stream quality-of-service guarantee and
improves the network utilization. Also, the proposed joint MAC
protocol includes an admission controller, a scheduler and a
bandwidth allocator.


While the first part of the thesis strives to improve the hybrid
network reliability through protection in the EPON part and extend
the network coverage through innovative methods, the second part
attempts to maintain and enhance these objectives by adding a
reliable technology to the integrated network. Specifically, this
section examines the way in which the RPR network can be integrated
with the proposed EPON-WiMAX architecture to form an RPR-EPON-WiMAX
hybrid network, which can be a solution for both access and metro
networks. The proposed architecture is reliable due to the
dependability of the RPR standard and the protection mechanism
employed in the EPON network. Moreover, the architecture contains a
high fault tolerance against node and connection failure. In the
second part, the joint MAC protocol for the RPR-EPON-WiMAX hybrid
network includes a multi-level dynamic bandwidth allocation
algorithm, a distributed admission control, a scheduler, and a
routing algorithm. This MAC protocol aims to maximize the advantages
of the proposed architecture by distributing its functionalities
over the parts of the architecture and jointly executing the parts
of the MAC protocol.

Download

Share

COinS