Load-dependent power-efficient passive optical network architectures

Passive optical networks consume nearly 70% of peak power even when the network load is almost zero (i.e., off-peak). To reduce power consumption under low-load conditions, we propose the concept of a flexible network architecture. Each architecture is a unique combination of central office, subscriber, and end-user equipment variants. Three such architectures are proposed. The architecture that minimizes the overall power consumption of the network can be chosen provided its network performance is within an acceptable range. Using numerical evaluation, we observe that three of these architectures perform better than the others. We describe the network operation for these architectures and then evaluate their network performance using simulations. For two of the studied scenarios, it is shown that at least 35% power savings can be achieved by adopting a proposed architecture during off-peak network loads, without significant performance impact in terms of throughput and packet delay.