Unified multiservice all-packet-based broadband access architecture: An evolutionary path towards a fixed mobile convergence solution.

摘要

Mobile networks and services have gone beyond voice-only communication services and are rapidly evolving towards data-centric services. Emerging mobile data services are expected to see the same explosive growth in demand that internet and wireless voice services have seen in recent years. Demand for data-centric mobile services including web surfing, IPTV, music and video downloads, and other streaming services, will emerge as an equally significant market driver as that of the traditional mobile voice services. With this trend, mobile networks will experience the same paradigm shift that has already occurred in wireline networks, namely the shift from voice-centric to data-centric networks.;In anticipation of this paradigm shift, mobile operators are currently planning to migrate their existing TDM-based mobile network infrastructure to a fully packet-based network. This migration is mainly to support the emerging 3G/4G data-centric services along with the diverse QoS and rate requirements set by these services faces several technical as well as economical hurdles.;To address some of these key challenges, this thesis argues for an immediate migration from current TDM-based mobile environment to fully packet-based mobile networks with a fiber based access infrastructure. Specifically, this work proposes and devises cost-effective multiservice Ethernet-based mobile backhaul networking architecture with a fiber based access infrastructure. The proposed architecture extends the reach of Ethernet access to base stations and provides a scalable mobile backhaul infrastructure that can accommodate emerging 3G/4G and legacy traffic as well as subscriber growth.;Rather than deploying a totally new packet-based mobile infrastructure, the proposed architecture utilizes the already existing EPON access infrastructure, this enables a seamless migration path to fixed/mobile convergence and creates the potential of supporting several powerful and cost-effective packet-based fixed/mobile access architectural models.;This work will be divided into two main sequential phases. In the first phase, we propose a novel EPON architecture that uses a fully distributed arbitration scheme that supports differentiated QoS. In the second phase, based on the developed decentralized EPON infrastructure, several powerful and cost-effective packet-based fixed/mobile access architectural models are presented. The performances of each model are compared with each other and with that of traditional RAN model.