Standard-compliant QoS provisioning scheme for LTE/EPON integrated networks

Passive optical networking has been recognized as a solution for next generation mobile backhaul network. Such technology allows service providers to reduce costs by using already deployed fiber to the x systems while simultaneously supporting increasing demands for mobile broadband Internet access. In this article, we describe a QoS provisioning scheme for LTE/ EPON integrated networks. With this approach, the radio resource management functions of an integrated device, known as ONU-eNB, can take advantage of the information available from the LTE and EPON networks to improve performance. Furthermore, as an example, we show how the implementation of the proposed approach can improve network utilization and users´ QoS in an integrated network even under variation of the available bandwidth in the mobile backhaul network.