Scalability analysis of hybrid optical wireless access network (HOWAN)

The hybrid optical wireless access network (HOWAN) is a prestigious architecture for next generation (NG) access network. NG access networks are proposed to provide high data rate, broadband multiple services, scalable bandwidth, and flexible communication for manifold wireless end-users (WEUs). In the proposed HOWAN, the optical backhaul and the wireless front-end are implemented by using wavelength division multiplexing/time division multiplexing passive optical network (WDM/TDM PON), and WiFi wireless access technique respectively. In this paper, the scalability of the optical backhaul in terms of the number of supported APs and link reach range are analyzed. The scalability of the optical backhaul based on maximum split ratio of 1/32 for each wavelength channel and a fiber length around 23 km from the central office (CO) to the access point (AP) is analyzed with bit error rate (BER) of 10^-9.