A MAC layer protocol for a bandwidth scalable OFDMA PON architecture

A medium access control (MAC) layer protocol for passive optical networks (PONs) based on orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) is proposed in this paper. The protocol is able to exploit statistical multiplexing to offer an efficient bandwidth control with greater flexibility and granularity to the bandwidth allocation, hence, providing high performance measured in terms of throughput, delay and jitter. The main recommendations of the proposed MAC are described in accordance to the physical layer features of the architecture named Bandwidth Scalable OFDMA PON (BS-OFDMA PON). Simulation results show that the proposed architecture based on tree topology is able to provide triple-play services to 32 optical network units (ONUs) and transmission rates above 33 Gb/s per wavelength.