On-Demand Video Streaming Schemes Over Shared-WDM-PONs

A critical challenge for video-on-demand (VoD) services is to provide an entertainment service with minimum playback delay. A passive optical network (PON) that employs a high-speed optical fiber from an optical line terminal (OLT) to a number of optical network units (ONUs) can offer high bandwidth for multimedia applications (such as VoD services) in an access network. In this paper, we propose two novel video streaming techniques, called OLT broadcasting with ONU fast patching (BFP) and prediction-based OLT broadcasting and ONU fast patching (PBFP). The BFP scheme utilizes the ONU fast patching scheme at each ONU, and proposes a heuristic algorithm to find near optimum solutions of related optimization problem so that the worst-case playback delay (WPD) is minimized. The PBFP adds a prediction level for video popularity to the BFP scheme and uses a seamless channel transition technique to seamlessly change the number of channels allocated to videos. We study the efficiency of the proposed schemes when they are used in a shared wavelength division multiplexed passive optical network (Shared-WDM-PON) that adapts the broadcast nature of a GPON´s downstream wavelength to WDM-PONs. Our simulation results indicate that the proposed schemes can improve both WPD and average playback delay performance parameters.