OSLG: A new granting scheme in WDM Ethernet passive optical networks

Ali Razmkhah, Akbar Ghaffarpour Rahbar

Computer Networks Research Lab, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 10 June 2011
Revised 1 August 2011
Available online 15 September 2011
Keywords:
WDM EPON
Granting
Bandwidth saving/compensating
Bandwidth wastage
a b s t r a c t
Several granting schemes have been proposed to grant transmission window and dynamic bandwidth
allocation (DBA) in passive optical networks (PON). Generally, granting schemes suffer from bandwidth
wastage of granted windows. Here, we propose a new granting scheme for WDM Ethernet PONs, called
optical network unit (ONU) Side Limited Granting (OSLG) that conserves upstream bandwidth, thus
resulting in decreasing queuing delay and packet drop ratio. In OSLG instead of optical line terminal
(OLT), each ONU determines its transmission window. Two OSLG algorithms are proposed in this paper:
the OSLG_GA algorithm that determines the size of its transmission window in such a way that the band-
width wastage problem is relieved, and the OSLG_SC algorithm that saves unused bandwidth for more
bandwidth utilization later on. The OSLG can be used as granting scheme of any DBA to provide better
performance in the terms of packet drop ratio and queuing delay. Our performance evaluations show
the effectiveness of OSLG in reducing packet drop ratio and queuing delay under different DBA
techniques.
2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
In the last decade, passive optical networks (PON) became a
candidate technology for access networks. The PON can provide
huge amount of bandwidth and relieves bandwidth bottleneck be-
tween high speed backbones and end users.
Ethernet PON (EPON) [13] is one of the PON solutions that
merges Ethernet equipments and PONinfrastructure. Typical topol-
ogy of the EPONis tree topology, whichlocates Optical Line Terminal
(OLT) at the root of the tree. EPONconnects the OLT to n optical net-
work units (ONUs) by a 1:n optical splitter/combiner. All data trans-
missions are performed through the OLT. In the downstream
direction, the OLT broadcasts data to all ONUs. On the other hand,
the ONUs share data channel from the splitter/combiner to the
OLT in the upstreamdirection. Therefore, a MACprotocol is required
to provide multiple access in the upstream direction.
To avoid collision in the upstream direction, time division mul-
tiplexing (TDM) or wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) can
be used. In TDM PON [46], a single wavelength is shared among
all ONUs and each ONU is assigned a time slot to transmit its data.
Whereas, in WDM PON, e.g., [1,710], multiple wavelengths are
deployed in each ber link. Each ONU can be assigned an individual
wavelength; typically, the number of wavelengths in a WDM PON
could be less than the number of ONUs. Clearly, the WDM PON can
provide more bandwidth than the TDM PON.
EPON employs multipoint control protocol (MPCP) [4] to facili-
tate dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA). MPCP contains two con-
trol messages, namely Gate and Report. The OLT uses the gate
massage to grant transmission window to ONUs and an ONU em-
ploys the report message to announce its bandwidth demand to
the OLT. The MPCP operates in TDM EPONs. To guarantee MPCP
to operate in WDM EPONs, i.e., registering and ranging ONUs and
assigning wavelength, an extension to MPCP has been introduced
in Ref. [7].
For dynamic bandwidth allocation, the OLT must decide on
which size should be granted to each ONU. Granting can be divided
into three major groups as xed granting, gated granting; and lim-
ited granting:
1. In the xed granting scheme [11], the OLT grants all ONUs a
xed size transmission window regardless of the size an ONU
has requested. Since the bandwidth demand of an ONU can be
less or more than the granted window, this scheme cannot be
efcient. Note that this scheme underperformances granted
transmission window [12].
2. The gated granting scheme [11] grants the requester ONU
transmission window whatever size the ONU has requested.
This scheme is limited by buffer size of an ONU; the ONU band-
width demand should be equal or less than its buffer size. More
analysis for the gated granting scheme has been shown in Refs.
[13,14]. Since the window size is bounded to the buffer size, a
heavy loaded ONU can monopolize the data channel by trans-
mitting its relatively large buffered trafc, thus leading to the
starvation of ONUs with a small bandwidth demand.
1068-5200/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.yofte.2011.08.002

Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: ali.razmkhah@gmail.com (A. Razmkhah), ghaffarpour@sut.
ac.ir (A.G. Rahbar).
Optical Fiber Technology 17 (2011) 586593
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
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3. The limited granting (LG) scheme [11] introduces maximum
window size W
max
, in which each ONU is granted the minimum
of its requested size and W
max
. The limitation on window size
can provide better fairness and shortest cycle time. Cycle time
denotes the duration in which all ONUs can transmit their data
or report messages once. The LG scheme removes the channel
monopolizing problem in the gated granting scheme. Addition-
ally, some granting schemes which are decedents of the LG
scheme have been proposed. The limited with excess distribu-
tion scheme (LED) [15,16] provides a minimum bandwidth
guarantee (B
min
) for each ONU by initially assigning B
min
to each
ONU, and then sharing excess bandwidth of light-loaded ONU
(those ONUs with report <B
min
) among heavy-loaded ONUs
(those ONUs with report >B
min
). On the other hand, the grant
estimation scheme [17] estimates the size of new arriving pack-
ets between two consecutive pollings, and assigns the requester
ONU additional estimated size together with its reported win-
dow. Other estimation based DBAs have been proposed in Refs.
[18,19]. These schemes are the extension of the LG scheme, and
their allocated window size is limited by W
max
. The advantages
of the LG scheme and its descendants are to relieve the inef-
ciency problem of the xed granting scheme and to remove
channel monopolizing problem of the gated scheme. In short,
the LG scheme has been widely employed in TDM EPONS, intel-
ligent gap lling scheme (IGFS) [9], Nearest First Scheme (NFS)
[10] and other WDM EPON techniques like [20,21].
There are two major groups of DBA scheduling in both TDM and
WDM EPON [7,2224] as online and ofine scheduling. Under the
online scheduling, e.g., [10,22], the OLT schedules an ONU upon its
report message arrival. Whereas in ofine scheduling, e.g., [7,9],
the OLT makes scheduling after the arrival of all report messages
from all ONUs. A comparison of ofine vs. online DBA scheduling
has been presented in Ref. [25]. For example, IGFS [9] is an ofine
scheduler and NFS [10] is an online scheduler. The IGFS rst favors
ONUs that their transmission window can be accommodated in the
gaps between other ONUs transmission windows, and second or-
ders ONUs by their transmission end times and favors ONUs which
have the minimum latency, i.e., the end time of transmission win-
dow. The NFS scheme has an ofine characteristic and by intelli-
gently employing early allocation mechanism, it functions in a
semi online manner. The NFS prioritizes ONUs based on their
round trip times (RTTs) in an ascending order. The NFS can allevi-
ate channel idle time and can provide more efcient transmission.
Both the NFS and the IGFS are suitable for heterogeneous WDM
EPONs, where ONUs are located at different distances from the
OLT. In Ref. [26], another DBA for heterogeneous EPONs has been
proposed.
As aforementioned, the LG scheme has been widely employed
in WDM EPON. However, the LG scheme suffers from under-serv-
ing of buffers when report size is greater than W
max
[27]. Under-
serving of buffers wastes the upstream bandwidth, and increases
both queuing delay and packet drop ratio. This motivates us to de-
sign a more efcient granting scheme, called the ONU Side Limited
Granting (OSLG) scheme.
Our objective is to propose two ONU Side Limited Granting
(OSLG)schemes in order to improve performance of the LG scheme
in terms of queuing delay and drop ratio in WDM EPON. The OSLG
can be used as granting scheme of any DBA to provide better per-
formance in the terms of packet drop ratio and queuing delay. The
OSLG can even be applied to the next generation optical access
networks, i.e., Long Reach PON (LR-PON) [2831] which extends
OLT-ONU distance up to 100 km and the OLT arbitrates hundreds
of ONUs. The OSLG_GA uses Gate Accommodation (GA) algorithm
which is based on the LG scheme, in which each ONU knows W
max
in advance. Instead of reporting its whole queue size, each ONU
computes the optimal value of transmission window size by taking
W
max
into account that fully meets its trafc requirements. By this,
no bandwidth is wasted and the network can optimize packet drop
ratio and queuing delay performances. In addition, the Save and
Compensate (SC) mechanism is employed in the OSLG_SC to
achieve better performance and to completely serve maximum
granted window.
The contributions of this paper are the proposal of OSLG_GA and
OSLG_SC as two granting schemes for WDM EPON that can im-
prove queuing delay and drop ratio performances compared to
the LG scheme.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2,
network model is presented. Section 3 introduces our proposed
OSLG algorithm. Section 4 presents performance evaluation, fol-
lowed by a conclusion in Section 5.
2. Network model
The network is a WDM EPON with tree topology with n ONUs,
displayed in Fig. 1. The transmission bandwidth is deployed by x
data wavelengths; where x is equal or smaller than n. In addition,
the network uses control channel k
0
to exchange gate messages.
The ONUs may be located in different distances from the OLT. Each
ONU is equipped with a tunable transmitter to transmit its data
and report messages on a scheduled wavelength, and a xed recei-
ver to receive data and gate messages on k
0
. On the other hand, the
OLT uses xed array of receivers to receive data packets together
with report messages, while it uses a xed transmitter in order
to send gate messages on k
0
. Using the gate message, the OLT
informs each ONU the transmission time and the scheduled wave-
length in order to transmit its data and report message. A Report
message is transmitted at the head of data in this paper. A list of
general notations and symbols are illustrated in Table 1.
3. The OSLG scheme
Bandwidth wasting in the LG scheme leads to under-serving of
buffers, where packet queuing delay and packet drop ratio in-
crease. To illustrate the bandwidth wastage, for example, consider
we have W
max
= 8000 bytes. Let an ONU report 8500 bytes to the
OLT, where this ONU has ve packets with size 1500 bytes and
one packet with size 1000 bytes. The OLT grants the ONU the
amount of W
max
. The ONU uses 7500 bytes of W
max
and uploads
its rst ve packets. Then, the ONU has a right to transmit 8000
7500 = 500 bytes, but the last packet size is 1000 bytes. Since the
Ethernet packet cannot be fragmented, the reminder of W
max
is
wasted.
We introduce two OSLG techniques that can resolve the band-
width wastage problem by two Gate Accommodation (GA) and
Save and Compensate (SC) mechanisms. Note that the OSLG is a
granting scheme, not a DBA. The scheduling of ONUs and assigning
wavelengths to them are the functions of the OLT. An ONU only
determines the size of the transmission window. An abstract of
notations and general symbols are tabulated in Table 1.
3.1. The OSLG with Gate Accommodation (GA) algorithm (OSLG_GA)
The OSLG with Gate Accommodation (GA) algorithm is based on
the following rule. First, the OLT announces W
max
to all ONUs.
Then, the algorithm in Fig. 2 is executed by ONU
i
to compute the
optimal report size that must be announced to the OLT. Let S

i
and buf
i
denote the optimum window size and buffer of the ith
ONU, respectively; where buf
i
[j] determines the length of the j-th
packet stored in the ith ONU buffer. The OSLG_GA reviews packets
from the head of the buffer until the length of all reviewed packets
A. Razmkhah, A.G. Rahbar / Optical Fiber Technology 17 (2011) 586593 587
is less than or equal to W
max
. This algorithm respects two con-
straints as (1) the reported size 6W
max
; and (2) the reported size
should include an integer number of buffered packets. Finally,
the ONU reports the computed size S

to the OLT.
The computational complexity of the proposed OSLG_GA algo-
rithm is O(bufLength) where bufLength denotes the number of
packets stored in the buffer. Both Lines 1 and 2 have O(1) complex-
ity. Lines from 4 to 9 need O(3) complexity for each loop. Since the
while loop is repeated at most bufLength times, total complexity is
O(1 + 1 + 3 bufLength) = O(bufLength).
Now, a discussion is provided on the analysis of the LG and
OSLG_GA:
Under the LG, bandwidth is wasted when the granted window
cannot accommodate the next Ethernet packet. Recall that the
maximum length of an Ethernet frame is 1518 bytes with a pay-
load of 1500 bytes. Therefore, in the worst case, 1518
1 = 1517 bytes of a granted window can be wasted. Clearly, no
trafc is wasted under the best case.
Let b denote average Ethernet frame length buffered in an ONU.
Bandwidth wastage is minimized when W
max
is an integer mul-
tiplicand of b. In this case, granted window can fully accommo-
date an integer number of buffered packets. Let r be the amount
of wasted bandwidth obtained by r = W
max
mod b, where b mod c
means the remainder of b divided by c. This equation is used to
compute minimum and maximum bandwidth wastage in a sin-
gle cycle, where minimum wastage is 0 byte and maximum
wastage is b 1 bytes. Therefore, r
b1
2

b
2
bytes are wasted
on average in each bandwidth granting; and the wastage ratio
(w
r
) can be given by
w
r

b
2 W
max
100%: 1
To reduce w
r
in Eq. (1), one can consider W
max
large enough.
However, considering large values for W
max
results in monopo-
lizing of channel similar to the gated scheme, and large values
for W
max
cannot completely remove the wastage problem.
The wasted bandwidth in the LG together with guard times
leads to a larger gap between transmissions of two consecutive
ONUs. Thus, removing the wasted bandwidth can increase net-
work throughput. To completely remove the wasted bandwidth,
OSLG_GA can be employed, where it determines granting win-
dow size by complexity of O(bufLength). The OSLG_GA
decreases cycle time by relieving bandwidth wastage so that
the OLT can schedule the next cycle sooner than the LG scheme.
This results in reducing packet drop ratio and packet queuing
delay in each ONU. Since an ONU determines grant window
size, there is no need to compare the report size with W
max
at
the OLT side. In other words, the OLT grants whatever size the
ONU has requested similar to the gated scheme.
3.2. The OSLG with Save and Compensate (SC) algorithm (OSLG_SC)
Under the OSLG with Save and Compensate (OSLG_SC) scheme,
ONU
i
executes the algorithm depicted in Fig. 3 to compute the
Fig. 1. Typical WDM EPON.
Table 1
Abbreviation of symbols and notations.
b Average Ethernet frame length
k
i
The ith wavelength
x Number of wavelengths in WDM EPON network
B
min
Minimum guaranteed bandwidth
buf
i
Buffer of the ith ONU
buf
i
[j] Length of the j-th buffered packet of the ith ONU
CA
i
Channel availability time of the ith wavelength
g Guard time
granted_window_size Length of granted transmission window
n Number of ONUs
R Link bit rate
r
b,i
Residual unused bandwidth in the ith ONU
received_packet_size Length of packet that OLT has received
S

Optimal report size

Sb
i
Saved bandwidth of the ith ONU
S
p
Next packet length to be reviewed
Ub
i
Uncompensated bandwidth of the ith ONU
U
l
Upper limit on saved and uncompensated bandwidth
W
max
Maximum window size in limited granting
w
r
Ratio of wasted bandwidth to the granted bandwidth
1. Si*= 0 // optimum report size
2. j = 0 // index to stored packets
3. while (Si* Wmax)
4. If (bufi [j] + Si* Wmax) // check whether the next packet can be reported or not
5. Si* = Si* + bufi[j] // update Si*
6. j = j+1
7. else // reporting next packets may lead to bandwidth wasting
8. Break while
9. end if
10. end while
Fig. 2. Pseudo code for OSLG_GA algorithm in ONU
i
.
588 A. Razmkhah, A.G. Rahbar / Optical Fiber Technology 17 (2011) 586593
report size in order to report to the OLT. The main idea of the Save
and Compensate algorithm (OSLG_SC) is to save r
b,i
and use it later
to deliver more trafc in the next coming cycles, where r
b,i
is the
residual unused bandwidth in the ith ONU. Dene Sb
i
and Ub
i
to
be the saved and uncompensated bandwidth of ONU i, respec-
tively. The ONU
i
utilizes Sb
i
to store the amount of residual unused
bandwidth at current cycle, and the uncompensated bandwidth
Ub
i
to store the amount of bandwidth that ONU
i
has transmitted
more than its right in previous cycles. In each cycle, ONU
i
must
compensate Ub
i
by Sb
i
either totally or partially. Initially, both Sb
i
and Ub
i
are set to 0; and their values are updated by the OSLG_SC.
Under OSLG_SC, ONU
i
rst runs the pseudo code depicted in
Fig. 4 to compensate Ub
i
with Sb
i
, and then computes optimum
window size S

i
for the current cycle by taking both W
max
and Sb
i
into account (in parameter Temp_W
max
); by executing OSLG_GA
with Temp_W
max
instead of W
max
. If ONU
i
cannot satisfy its tempo-
rary maximum window (i.e., Temp_W
max
) and the condition dif-
f + Ub
i
6 U
l
holds true, it can use more bandwidth than
Temp_W
max
to deliver the next packet by updating Ub
i
and S

by
the diff and S
p
parameters, respectively. Note the parameter diff is
the difference of the requested bandwidth and Temp_W
max
pro-
vided that the requested bandwidth is larger than Temp_W
max
.
Otherwise, S

is assumed as the optimum window size of the cur-

rent cycle. Note that Temp_W
max
has temporary lifetime and varies
from one cycle to another in each ONU. To prevent each ONU from
monopolizing the data channel, the following constraints must be
satised: (1) The values of both Sb
i
and Ub
i
should be limited by
threshold U
l
to avoid the situation in which an ONU monopolizes
data channel for a while and (2) Sb
i
must compensate Ub
i
either to-
tally or partially (see the pseudo code in Fig. 4).
The computational complexity of the proposed OSLG_SC algo-
rithm is O(bufLength). Note that the pseudo code in Fig. 4 needs
O(3) to run completely. In Lines 2 and 3 of Fig. 4, Ub
i
is totally com-
pensated. If there is no adequate Sb
i
for ONU i, the parameter Ub
i
is
compensated partially in Lines 5 and 6 in Fig. 4. Then, we compute
the complexity of the algorithm displayed in Fig. 3. Lines 1 and 2 in
Fig. 3 need O(3) and O(2) complexities, respectively. Lines from 3
to 5 have O(bufLength), O(1), and O(1) complexities, respectively.
Lines from6 to 12 need O(3) complexity. Thus, the total complexity
for the proposed OSLG_SC is O(3 + 2 + bufLength + 1 +
1 + 3) = O(bufLength).
The main difference between OSLG_GA and OSLG_SC is on the
amount of transmitted trafc. Under OSLG_GA, each ONU can
transmit its trafc less than or equal to W
max
. Under OSLG_SC, each
ONU can transmit trafc up to W
max
plus some additional band-
width; where this additional bandwidth depends on the amount
of saved bandwidth and uncompensated bandwidth, where the
amount of the both saved bandwidth and uncompensated band-
width is limited to U
l
.
Saving unused bandwidth in OSLG_SC may seem to be similar to
the early allocation LED approach described in [15], where light-
loaded ONUs are scheduled in an online manner and heavy-loaded
ONUs are scheduled in an ofine manner by assigning some
excessive bandwidth. However, there are some differences
between OSLG and LED as follows:
In LED, the OLT provides a minimum guarantee for each ONU by
initially assigning B
min
to each ONU, and then shares excessive
bandwidth of light-loaded ONUs among heavy-loaded ONUs.
Whereas in OSLG_SC, the OLT provides bandwidth guarantee
up to W
max
and each ONU saves its own unused bandwidth
for using in the next coming cycles.
1. Compensate Ubi by Sbi // Ubi is compensated by Sbi
2. Temp_Wmax = Wmax + Sbi; Sbi = 0 //compute Temp_Wmax as upper limit on requested window
3. Compute Si* by the OSLG_GA using Temp_Wmax
4. Sp = next buffered packet length // length of next packet to be reviewed
5. diff = Si* + Sp Temp_Wmax // compute uncompensated bandwidth of the current cycle
6. if(diff> 0 & diff + Ubi<= Ul) // check that uncompensated bandwidth does not exceed threshold Ul
7. Ubi = Ubi + diff // update Ubi
8. Si* = Si* + Sp ; rb,i = 0 // update Si* and residual traffic
9. Else // if uncompensated bandwidth plus Sp exceeds threshold Ul
10. rb,i = Temp_Wmax - Si* // compute residual unused bandwidth
11. Sbi = Min(rb,i , Ul) // ensure threshold Ul on Sbi
12. end if
Fig. 3. Pseudo code for the OSLG_SC algorithm in ONU
i
.
1. If(Ubi<= Sbi)
2. Sbi = Sbi - Ubi // Compensate Ubi totally
3. Ubi = 0
4. Else
5. Ubi= Ubi - Sbi // Compensate Ubi partially
6. Sbi = 0
7. End if
Fig. 4. Pseudo code for compensation of Ub
i
in ONU
i
.
Table 2
Simulation parameters.
n 32 ONUs
RTT Randomly selected between 100 ls and 200 ls
W
max
10,000 bytes
U
l
10,000 bytes
ONU buffer capacity 1,000,000 bytes
R 1 Gb/s
g 5 ls
Fig. 5. Wasting ratio in LG vs. OSLG schemes under NFS and IGFS DBA algorithms at
x = 8.
A. Razmkhah, A.G. Rahbar / Optical Fiber Technology 17 (2011) 586593 589
In the LED scheme, excessive bandwidth is computed for the
current cycle and is totally used in the current cycle; whereas
the OSLG_SC has no sharing mechanism and each ONU saves
unused bandwidth to use in the next cycle individually.
In LED, bandwidth wastage at heavy-loaded ONUs is severe
under some conditions. For example, consider an EPON with
14 light-loaded ONUs and two heavy-loaded ONUs. Let the
amount of excessive bandwidth is 14 Kbytes and heavy-load
ONUs need 1 and 2 Kbytes additional bandwidth respectively.
Therefore, up to 14 2 1 = 11 Kbytes of the assigned addi-
tional bandwidth is wasted. While in OSLG_SC, additional band-
width is assigned in a way that it is totally consumed by the
ONU and no bandwidth is wasted.
In addition, the LED technique schedules heavy-loaded ONUs in
an ofine manner, while OSLG_SC can be used in both ofine
and online DBA such as IGFS and NFS.
3.3. Wavelength assignment
In general wavelength assignment [7,9,10,16], the rst wave-
length with the minimum availability time (called rst-available
(FA) wavelength assignment technique in this paper) is assigned
to the requester ONU, where the availability time of wavelength
k
i
denotes the time at which the next transmission is possible on
k
i
. Since RTTs are dissimilar, availability time of wavelength k
i
is
not the same for all ONUs. To illustrate the FA operation, let W
max
be 10 Kbytes, link bit rate be R = 1 Gb/s, RTT be 100 ls, U
l
be
10 Kbytes, and guard time g be 5 ls. Assume ONU1 has been
granted to transmit 15 Kbytes (under OSLG_SC) from time
t = 20 ls on k
1
, and this transmission takes 15 Kbytes 8/
R = 120 ls, where 120 ls > RTT. At time t = 20 + RTT/2 = 70 ls, the
OLT receives the report packet from ONU1 on k
1
(where report ar-
rives before data). Now if the availability times of wavelengths k
1
,
k
2
, and k
3
(for ONU1) are CA
1
= 145 ls, CA
2
= 100 ls, and
CA
3
= 120 ls, respectively, k
2
will be assigned to ONU1 using the
FA wavelength assignment technique. Notice CA
i
denotes channel
availability time of the ith wavelength. The computational com-
plexity of the FA algorithm, i.e., choosing the wavelength with min-
imum availability time, is O(x).
4. Performance evaluation
In this section, the proposed OSLG scheme is evaluated. As
aforementioned, the core idea of the OSLG is to conserve band-
width and avoid bandwidth wastage. As aforementioned the LG
scheme shows better performance than both gated and xed
schemes in terms of packet delay and fairness. Note that descen-
dants of the LG scheme such as grant estimation scheme inherit
the bandwidth wastage problem from the LG scheme. Hence,
instead of comparing descendants of the LG scheme with OSLG,
only LG is compared with OSLG. Our comparisons are in terms of
average packet queuing delay, packet drop ratio and wastage ratio
(w
r
). Eq. (1) computes w
r
in a situation that simulation time is not
bounded; therefore for simplicity we can compute accurate w
r
for
the whole simulation time by
w
r

P
granted window size
P
received packet size
P
granted window size
100%: 2
The network is evaluated under various trafc loads from 0.1 to
0.9 normalized to 1 Gb/s. The ONUs are randomly located at differ-
ent distances from 10 to 20 km from the OLT, i.e., RTT varies be-
tween 100 ls and 200 ls. The bit rate of ber link between the
OLT and each ONU is 1 Gb/s. Each local network or private end user
connected to an ONU operates at 100 Mb/s, and inter-arrival of
packets follows the Pareto distribution with shape parameter
a = 1.3. The length of Ethernet packet is uniformly selected be-
tween 100 and 1500 bytes, with the average of b = 800 bytes.
We evaluate the OSLG under both main DBA categories; online
scheduling and ofine scheduling. We select the NFS with early
allocation mechanism as our online scheduling algorithm and IGFS
as our ofine DBA for both LG and OSLG schemes. The AF is used as
wavelength assignment technique in all schemes. Simulation sce-
narios have been implemented by C#.net, and 15 replications have
been performed for each point in the diagrams. The results are
Fig. 6. Queuing delay in LG scheme vs. OSLG under NFS and IGFS DBA algorithms at
x = 8.
Table 3
Comparison of the OSLG_GA vs. OSLG_SC under the NFS scheme at x = 8.
Load Packet queuing delay (ls) Packet drop ratio (%) Reduction (%)
OSLG_GA OSLG_SC OSLG_GA OSLG_SC Queuing Delay Drop Ratio
0.1 264.39 264.39 0 0 0 0
0.2 417.32 399.03 0 0 4.38 0
0.3 5357.75 5273.99 0 0 1.56 0
0.4 8411.34 8352.71 8.59 8.47 0.69 1.39
0.5 10290.31 10244.58 25.07 24.91 0.44 0.63
0.6 11552.16 11514.04 37.08 36.94 0.32 0.37
0.7 12451.86 12419.49 45.62 45.50 0.25 0.26
0.8 13129.03 13099.43 52.23 52.12 0.22 0.21
0.9 13647.87 13621.82 57.36 57.27 0.19 0.15
590 A. Razmkhah, A.G. Rahbar / Optical Fiber Technology 17 (2011) 586593
found with 95% of condence interval to be within 2% of the mean
value shown. Other parameters are tabulated in Table 2.
In Fig. 5, the wastage ratio (based on Eq. (2)) is displayed for the
OSLG techniques (both OSLG_GA and OSLG_SC) and the LG; where
both OSLG_GA and OSLG_SC conserve the bandwidth and there is
no bandwidth wastage under the OSLG schemes. Under LG, band-
width wastage starts at load 0.2, where the demanded transmis-
sion window of an ONU exceeds W
max
. From load 0.4 to 0.9,
wastage ratio is approximately constant so that values of w
r
are
very close to 5% wastage of granted window.
Fig. 6 presents average queuing delay performance of both OSLG
and LG schemes. Both OSLG_GA and OSLG_SC achieve smaller
packet delay than LG since they can conserve bandwidth. Although
both OSLG methods conserve bandwidth, saving unused band-
width of W
max
in OSLG_SC and using the saved bandwidth in the
next cycles leads to smaller queuing delay in OSLG_SC than OSLG_-
GA. A detailed comparison of OSLG_GA vs. OSLG_SC is presented in
Table 3, where the Reduction column (the last column) shows the
differences between queuing delay and drop ratio performances
under both OSLG_SC and OSLG_GA. At normalized load 0.1, both
OSLG schemes have almost the same performance in the terms
of queuing delay and drop ratio. From load 0.2 to 0.9, OLSG_SC pre-
sents better performance results than OSLG_GA since OLSG_SC em-
ploys the save and compensation mechanism.
Fig. 7 shows packet drop ratio in the OSLG scheme (both OSLG_-
GA and OSLG_SC) in comparison with LG. Both OSLG algorithms
have lower drop ratio than LG. This is the result of efcient grant-
ing of transmission window that does not waste bandwidth. From
load 0.5 to 0.9, the network is congested for each scheme. Since
queuing delay in OSLG_SC is lower than OSLG_GA, packets under
OSLG_SC experience smaller loss rate than OSLG_GA. This is true
under both the NFS and the IGFS schemes.
Fig. 8 displays average queuing delay and Fig. 9 depicts packet
drop ratio under various number of data channels x at load 0.7.
Simulation results in each scenario shows that OSGL_SC is more
efcient than OSLG_GA and OSLG_GA is more efcient than LG.
Now the effect of threshold U
l
used in OSLG_SC is evaluated. Re-
call OSLG_SC provides the mechanism in which an ONU is capable
to save unused bandwidth to use in the next cycles without wast-
ing bandwidth. The amount of saved bandwidth or uncompensated
bandwidth is limited up to the threshold U
l
. In Fig. 10, simulation
results under multiple values of U
l
/W
max
are displayed at load
0.7. The U
l
/W
max
ratio varies from 0.1 to 1.0. Although average
queuing delays are close to each other under these ratios, they
are considerable. One can see that by increasing the threshold va-
lue, packet queuing delay decreases.
In the second part of our performance evaluation, OSLG is com-
pared with the LED technique proposed in Ref. [15]. This compar-
ison is under two scenarios: under the rst scenario half of ONUs
operate at moderate trafc load, labeled with OSLG_GA1 and
LED1. Under the second scenario, all ONUs operate at heavy trafc
Fig. 7. Packet drop ratio in LG scheme vs. OSLG schemes under NFS and IGFS DBA
algorithms at x = 8.
Fig. 8. Queuing delay in LG scheme vs. OSLG schemes under NFS and IGFS DBA
algorithms at load 0.7 and different data channels x.
Fig. 9. Packet drop ratio in LG and OSLG schemes under NFS and IGFS DBA
algorithms at load 0.7 and different data channels x.
A. Razmkhah, A.G. Rahbar / Optical Fiber Technology 17 (2011) 586593 591
load, labeled with OSLG_GA2 and LED2. Since LED [15] operates in
TDM EPONs, it is modied to operate under WDM EPONs in order
to be comparable with our proposed OSLG.
Fig. 11 shows average queuing delay in OSLG_GA and LED under
both scenarios. Under both scenarios, OSLG_GA outperforms the
LED. In the rst scenario, since half of ONUs operate at moderate
trafc load, therefore, there is some excessive bandwidth to be
redistributed among heavy-loaded ONUs. Whereas in the second
scenario, all ONUs demand more than guaranteed bandwidth B
min
,
and therefore, there is no excessive bandwidth to be shared among
heavy-loaded ONUs. In this case, LED becomes similar to the LG
since all ONUs are limited to transmit up to a threshold.
Fig. 12 presents that OSLG_GA can achieve lower drop ratio in
comparison with LED under both scenarios. In addition, OSLG_GA
is compared vs. LED under various numbers of data channels x
at load 0.7 (see Table 4), where the Reduction column (the last col-
umn) shows the differences between queuing delay and drop ratio
performances under both OSLG_GA and LED. Simulation results in
each scenario show that OSLG_GA is more efcient than LED.
As shown up to now, the OSLG_SC is more efcient than OSLG_-
GA in terms of queuing delay and drop ratio performances. There-
fore, there is no need to compare OSLG_SC with LED; since
OSLG_GA is more efcient than LED, one can conclude that
OSLG_SC will be more efcient than LED as well.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, two new granting schemes that grant ONUs in a
more efcient way have been proposed and evaluated. The major
characteristic of the OSLG scheme is bandwidth conserving. The
OSLG can be used as granting scheme of any DBA to provide better
performance in the terms of packet drop ratio and queuing delay.
Simulations under various conditions show that OSLG grants ONUs
more efciently than both the LG and the LED schemes and
achieves better performance in terms of queuing delay and packet
drop ratio. Implementing OSLG algorithm at ONU side needs small
hardware and software requirements. At the OLT side, the OLT can
announce W
max
to the ONU that joins to the network. Using OSLG_-
GA, an ONU computes the optimal value of transmission window
size by taking W
max
into account in order to fully meet its trafc,
thus resulting in no bandwidth wastage. To further improvement
in the network performance, the Save and Compensate algorithm Fig. 11. Queuing delay in OSLG_GA vs. LED at x = 8.
Fig. 12. Drop ratio in OSLG_GA vs. LED at x = 8.
Table 4
Comparison of the OSLG_GA vs. LED under various numbers of data channels x at
load 0.7.
x Packet queuing delay
(ls)
Packet drop ratio
(%)
Reduction (%)
OSLG_GA LED OSLG_GA LED Queuing
Delay
Drop
Ratio
10 11036.44 12900.02 38.03 48.37 14.44 21.37
12 9602.92 11839.05 30.52 42.42 18.88 28.05
14 8583.72 11425.16 24.89 40.06 24.87 37.86
16 7866.33 10656.40 21.02 36.17 26.18 41.88
Fig. 10. Effect of threshold value of the OSLG_SC algorithm on average packet
queuing delay at load 0.7 and at x = 8.
592 A. Razmkhah, A.G. Rahbar / Optical Fiber Technology 17 (2011) 586593
has been proposed, where the OSLG_SC is a descendant of the
OSLG_GA, and employs the OSLG_GA as its main function. The
OSLG_SC saves unused bandwidth for each ONU to increase the
network efciency. Each ONU can compensate its uncompensated
bandwidth by the saved bandwidth. The amount of uncompen-
sated bandwidth and saved bandwidth are limited up to a prede-
ned threshold. Both OSLG_GA and OSLG_SC have the same
complexity. In short, OSLG_SC has the best performance in terms
of both queuing delay and packet drop ratio.
Acknowledgment
This research is nancially supported by Research Institute for
ICT, Iran.
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