DAAD-Go8 “A Future-Proof Design Framework for Access Networks: Balancing Cost, Resilience, and Power”

Goal:

The explosive growth in Internet data (predominantly video-centric) in conjunction with the proliferation of multimedia user devices, has resulted in massive deployments of fiber technology based broadband access networks around the world. In particular, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks which guarantee high capacity per home have emerged at the forefront to deliver bandwidth-intensive services and applications to the end user. Nonetheless, managing the future traffic growth of such networks requires careful considerations of a few core factors, namely: (i) maximizing the network’s capacity per user, (ii) minimizing operating and capital costs (iii) minimizing its energy consumption, and (iv) managing network survivability thus ensuring maximized resilience to each end user. So far, current research has been focused on a subset of these factors and without taking into consideration current trends in energy and cost efficiency improvements in the future. Rising to this fundamental challenge, the proposed project aims to understand the interdependencies of these four contributing factors. That is, the outcome will be a first effort to provide a network design framework for a sustainable access network in terms of the interactions between network growth, technological progress, equipment replacement lifetime, and energy consumption. We aim to provide an optimized framework that will ensure a more comprehensive approach in managing the sustainable growth of the network. The project brings together a formidable team comprising the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Melbourne (UoM), with expertise on energy-efficient network design and systems level integration, and the Institute for Communications Networks Technische Universität München (TUM), a research leader on techno-economic analysis and green optical networking. Both UoM and TUM will also jointly work with a team from Optical Networks Laboratory in KTH Sweden, experts on network design and survivability.

Our contribution

• Proposal of four survivable architectures for converged access networks, which are interconnecting terminals with different requirements (e.g. connection availability, bandwidth). These architectures combine rapid fault detection and protection switching against high impact failures but without the need to rely on upstream transmissions for LOS detection.
• Comparison of four architectures across three different area densities under three deployment scenarios has been presented in our first peer reviewed publication
• Comparison of the influence of proposed protection schemes onto the cost, availability and energy consumption for different backhaul/fronthaul scenarios.
• Propose a new Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) scheme which has been applied to a public Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) access network allowing further reduction in power consumption.

Contact Carmen Mas Machuca for more information.