Fixed Mobile Convergence: A Self-Aware QoS Architecture for Converging WiMAX and GEPON Access Networks

The access network has remained the bottleneck in efforts to deliver bandwidth intensive new-generation applications and services to subscribers. In the wired access network, GEPON is a promising technology for relieving this bottleneck while GEPON´s counterpart in wireless access networks, is WiMAX. A converged quadruplet-services (video, voice, data and mobility) enabled network, which takes full advantage of the strengths and weaknesses of each of these remarkable technologies, no doubt makes an attractive new-generation access network solution. In this paper, therefore, we present an architecture for such a convergence and we elaborate on how control and data packets are formatted, switched and forwarded or transported; how scheduling and bandwidth resource allocation is done; and on how quality of service is provisioned and guaranteed end-to-end in the converged access network architecture.