A converged optical wireless architecture for mobile backhaul networks

In this work we propose a new unified PON-RAN architecture for LTE mobile backhaul networks, employing ring-based WDM PONs. The proposed architecture supports dynamic setup of virtual circuits for inter-base station communication, over a dedicated λ_LAN channel. The reservation mechanism is arbitrated by the OLT, which also monitors the traffic imbalances of downstream channels. The proposed architecture also supports load balancing, by dynamically reallocating and sharing the capacity of the downstream wavelengths.